Exploring the Madlands
by William Easley
Summary: June, 2017: Dipper and Wendy, an engaged couple, set off on an overnight camping expedition to explore a part of Gravity Falls where few, if any, people have ever been. It starts off as a fun trip, and then . . . things start to get a little bit crazy. Wendip and weirdness.
1. Chapter 1

_I do not own the show GRAVITY FALLS or any of the characters; both are the property of the Walt Disney Company and of Alex Hirsch. I make no money from these stories but write just for fun and in the hope that other fans enjoy reading them. I will ask, please, do not copy my stories elsewhere on the Internet. I work hard on these, and they mean a lot to me. Thank you._

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**Exploring the Madlands**

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**(June 11, 2017)**

**1: Away from It All**

By Sunday, Mabel had the Grunkles' party practically planned and had begun to dole out various work details. Very sensibly, Wendy and Dipper agreed to a long hike and an overnight camping trip that just happened to coincide with the most frantic phase of Mabel's plotting, scheming, and party preparations. Just coincidence. Really. Happy coincidence.

To be safe, they snuck away before daylight, using Wendy's car—which, the evening before, she had parked off the road way down at the base of the Shack driveway (Mabel always claimed she had ears like a cat and could hear in the dark). Equipped with backpacks, with the tent already stashed in the trunk, Dipper and Wendy tiptoed down the drive in hiking boots, and if you've never tried that, it's harder than you'd think.

They climbed into the Dodge Dart, Wendy released the emergency brake and put the car in neutral, and they coasted all the way down past Stan's driveway and then Ford's before she turned the key and the engine fired up. "Made it," she said. "Dip, you mad at me?"

"Huh?" Dipper asked. "No! Why? I mean about what?"

"Those weird living sock monkeys," Wendy said. "I teased you on-camera because Mabel bet me I wouldn't. I know that bothered you."

"Eh, just Mabel being Mabel," Dipper said. "I was ticked off at her, not you, but I'm over it. I just wonder who she's gonna prank when she gets into college. What happened to the monkeys, anyway? They didn't seem to be around this morning."

"When you were upstairs working on the edits and stuff, Mabel took them way off into the forest and released them into the wild," Wendy said.

Dipper shook his head. "Huh. Great. She's probably just ruined the whole ecology by introducing an invasive species."

"Not such a big deal, I think," Wendy said as they made the turn onto the county road. "I mean, the sock monkeys sure looked like they were making out, but they don't have the necessary equipment. They can't reproduce. Probably."

"Frankenstein," Dipper said.

"Huh? You lost me."

"That's sort of the plot of the novel _Frankenstein. _A stitched-together monster comes to life and demands a mate. Only in the novel the student who assembled the monster refuses at the last minute and tears the woman he made into pieces. The sock monkey wanted a mate, and Mabel sewed one and brought it to life. In the novel, it did not end well."

"Don't know the book, just the movies, Karloff and Christopher Lee and like that. Frankenstein." Wendy mused about that. "Well, you know, a sock monkey's not exactly a huge reanimated corpse lurching around. They don't eat—no mouths—and so they can't grow or anything. I think stealing Soos's socks was about as evil as they can get."

"Where did that first one, the sock thief, come from to begin with?" Dipper asked.

"Abuelita looked at some of the pictures and recognized it. She got it for Harmony in Mexico, but it scared her, so she never played with it. But it was just, you know, a doll. Not alive or anything."

"And I'll bet Soos said he stuck it in the underwear drawer until Harmony got old enough not to be afraid of it," Dipper said slowly. "So if the bureau is magical somehow—maybe it came to life in the drawer and climbed out and started looking for another creature like itself?"

"Maybe. I don't speak Sock Monkey, dude," Wendy said. "Anyways, it's gone now. Probably never see it again."

"But I really ought to check out that bureau," Dipper told her. "Soos says his grandmother inherited it from her grandmother, and so on and so forth. I don't think it's actually a thousand years old, but it might be a couple hundred."

"Hey," Wendy said as she turned onto a rough secondary road, "why don't you and me take it to the Antiques Road Show? Might be one of those things, you know, 'This golf club in ordinary condition would be worth thirty cents, but because this one was specially made for Abraham Lincoln, we appraise it at ninety bajillion dollars.'"

"Did Abraham Lincoln play golf?" Dipper asked, chuckling.

"Sure, dude! Don't you remember? 'Fore! Score and seven holes ago . . . . "

"Very punny," Dipper said.

"Like that was better?"

They didn't hold hands—Wendy was a two-fisted driver—and Dipper didn't caress her neck, because that distracted her, and on winding roads in the pre-dawn darkness, she needed to concentrate. Their telepathy didn't work without skin-to-skin contact, so they rode in comfortable silence for the best part of an hour, Wendy making turn after turn, each one onto a rougher road.

Finally the logging trail they were on just ended. "We hoof it from here," Wendy said. "Everybody out."

"Where are we?" Dipper asked. The sun was just beginning to peek above the cliffs that bound the valley, but the forest they were in made everything gloomy and fog-patched.

"Back of beyond, my dad would say," Wendy said. She opened the trunk and removed the tent, rolled up neatly, but still bulky. "I'll take first turn hauling this. We'll trade in a couple hours. OK with you?"

"I guess," Dipper said, helping her strap it to her backpack. "But a couple of hours? How far are we going in the woods?"

"Just halfway," she said, shrugging to make sure the load was balanced. "After that, we're coming out of the woods."

"What are you smiling about?" Dipper asked.

She grinned. "Just thinkin'. In my first English class in community college, one night the teacher gave us several questions to think about. Trick questions, you know. One was 'There are ten apples on a table, and you take three away. How many do you have?' Mine was 'How far can you go in the woods?'"

"Three apples, right?" Dipper asked.

"Hey, knew you'd get it, man!" Wendy said. "Turn around, let me tighten those straps. Yep, if you take three, you got three, you leave seven behind. But I caught the teacher off-guard when I answered my question. That started him thinking I was just a smartass, and it got me in trouble a little bit. I had to prove my first paper wasn't plagiarized, but when we got past that, I liked the guy. This way."

Wendy followed a trail that Dipper couldn't even see. Dewy ferns brushed their legs, and they had to duck dew-pearled cobwebs now and then. "What was your answer to the question?" Dipper asked.

"Well, I said, 'How far can I go in the woods? Depends on who I'm with, man.'"

Dipper laughed. "You didn't!"

"Yeah, I did! That was when I was all nervous about being in a college class, and I don't know what made me pop off like that, but it surprised him. Shouldn't have done it."

"It was funny," Dipper said.

"Yeah, people laughed," Wendy said. "But I learned to keep my impulses under control. Just 'cause I made a joke, a lot of the guys in the class figured that meant I was easy, you know? Had to turn a bunch of them down, some more than once."

"Well, when we start college, you'll have the rings on your fingers to help with stuff like that."

"Yeah, well, you better wear that wedding band too, dude!"

"I'll never take it off, but really I wouldn't need it as a sign that I'm taken. Girls just look past me," Dipper said.

"Oh, really? Paz? Eloise? Candy and the girls you met on that road trip with your Grunkle Stan when you were twelve?"

"You heard about those?" Dipper asked.

"Yeah, man! You think Mabel would keep her mouth shut about juicy stuff like that?"

"That was dumb of me," Dipper admitted. "I was trying to get over you. I mean, you wanted to be friends—you know."

"Yeah, older girl, younger guy. You know what, though? Deep down, I'm actually glad Weirdmageddon happened. It was scary as hell—hold up, let's find the bridge across this."

"This" was a gorge perhaps thirty feet deep, rocky and narrow—but not quite narrow enough to risk jumping across—and with a whitewater stream roaring through the bottom.

"Bridge?" Dipper asked.

"Yeah, it's a fallen tree. Douglas fir. Somewheres around here—I think uphill a way. I always get a little lost in this part.

They worked their way through a dense growth of mixed salmonberry and Doutlas spinea. The ground grew steeper, and Dipper started to feel the weight of his pack. "You're glad Weirdmageddon happened?"

"Oh, yeah," Wendy said. "It got us together. And the more I saw of how you reacted under pressure, the more I started thinking, really three years isn't all that much difference. 'Specially won't be when he's eighteen and I'm twenty-one. Well, twenty for most of that year. And when we said goodbye at the end of that summer—"

"We traded hats and you gave me that note to open when I missed Gravity Falls," Dipper said.

Wendy clambered over a rock and gave him a hand up. "Yeah. How long did it take you to open it?"

He laughed. "I read it about five minutes into the bus trip! And I knew I had to come back the next summer. Thanks for the note."

"Thanks for coming back," Wendy said. "There, that's our bridge. Won't be so bad from there on to the spot where we're heading. I blazed a trail a couple-three years back, and I think I can still follow it.

"That," Dipper asked, staring at the huge tree that lay across the gorge, "is a bridge?"

"Nearest thing to one we got," she told him. "Just a matter of balancing. If you want, I'll hold your hand."

"Better not," Dipper said. "If I fell, I might drag you off, too. But I may crawl across!"

"Let me go first," Wendy suggested. "Don't look down. Instead, keep your eyes on my butt, where they belong!"

"That's an offer I can't refuse," Dipper said.

He had to swallow hard and pause to get up his nerve, but walking over a log five feet in diameter wasn't exactly like walking a tightrope. The rush of the water distracted him a little—as did Wendy's bottom in her tight jeans—but they both made it across. "Gets easier from here," Wendy said. "Rising ground, lots of bare rock, not much undergrowth. Little steep, but we'll take it easy. Hardly anybody ever gets up in here, dude. Unexplored territory! I thought you'd like it."

"It's interesting," Dipper said. The trees began to thin out—they were on the north slope of a hill, which got less sunlight—and then they emerged onto a rocky slope, with only a few tough plants struggling to survive in small pockets of soil. A quarter mile ahead was a sheer cliff—part of the bluffs that bounded the valley, Dipper guessed—with a vertical cleft running from ground level all the way up to the top.

"We're going in there, Dip," Wendy said. "I always wondered what lies beyond that."

"Probably just a gorge," Dipper said. "But I guess we'll find out."

"It's Gravity Falls," Wendy said. "Could be anything. But if it goes on very far, we won't get in too far. Dangerous."

"What? Animals?" Dipper asked.

"No, but look around. Mostly bare rock, and as far as I could see in from the opening, the floor of the gorge is rock, too. If it rains way up on the top of the cliffs, all that water sheets right down. It can't drain into the ground, not through solid rock, so—"

"Flash flood," Dipper said. "I got it. But there's no rain in the forecast. We ought to be all right."

"We ought to be," Wendy said, "'cause we're gonna be careful. Let's rest here before we start across the rocks, have some breakfast."

Breakfast was gorp—the camper's word for a kind of calorie-packed trail mix with dried fruit for energy, nuts for protein, grains for fiber, and so on—and gulps of water from their canteens. Wendy stretched. "Sore from walking?"

"Not yet," Dipper said. "That's a good side effect of running. Makes hiking a little easier."

"You decided whether to go out for the track team at WAU?" Wendy asked.

"You want me to?"

She answered by reaching for his hand. _Dipper, it's up to you. You don't have to prove a thing to me. If it would make you feel good, go for it, man!_

—_Thanks. I don't know. I guess I'm a little scared of playing in the big leagues._

_Come on! You posted a couple of record times in the state track meets. WAU would be glad to have you—and lucky._

—_But I won't have Bill urging me on. I think once or twice when I was about to give up, he kind of gave me a charge of energy to keep me going._

_Trust me on this, Dipper. You can be the best if you want to be. And so what if Bill's not urging you on? You'll have a wife in the stands cheering for you. That do?_

—_That'll do, _Dipper agreed. They spent a little time hugging and cuddling, but not too much. Wendy wanted to get to the split in the bluffs before noon, so they'd have time to go in a way and explore a bit. Then what?

"Well," she said, shouldering her pack again—Dipper had taken the tent and she had strapped it to his backpack—"that depends. I wouldn't want to camp inside the gorge, just in case of rain, but it may open up again on the other side. We'll just go in a ways and see what's what. It may end in a blank wall, it may open out into a small valley. We'll decide when we get to that point. But I definitely want us to camp on safe ground. I want tonight to be just the right amount of dangerous. Not too much, not too little."

"What's going to be dangerous?" Dipper asked as they started forward again.

"Oh, you and me," Wendy said. "We'll provide the danger. Ready? Let's pick up the pace!"

And off they went, toward the unknown.


	2. Chapter 2

**Exploring the Madlands**

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**(June 11, 2017)**

**2: A Lost World, and Good Riddance to It**

After an hour of threading through an upland forest of pines and firs, Dipper and Wendy reached a break in the trees. Here the footing changed from deep, ancient leaf mold to stone—the outflow of lava from a prehistoric volcano, or maybe magma spilled after the thirty-million-year-old crash of a UFO that cracked the crust of the Earth like an eggshell and shaped the Valley.

It was neither the type of lava called a'a—jagged chunks—or pahoehoe—ropy, swirly stone reminiscent of fudge poured when it is already thick. Instead, the iron-rich stone, dark and very hard, was more like the icing on a cake, relatively smooth except in spots where lightning strikes or the slow work of frost had spalled off plate-sized peels of it.

"Least we're out of the trees," Wendy said. "Tired yet?"

"No, let's go on."

On one hand, hiking became easier once they stepped onto the basalt shield that led up to the cliff, because with little to no soil to root in, the undergrowth dwindled to almost nothing: scrub growth, a plant called mountain mahogany that, surprisingly, was only a little more than three feet tall, and—Wendy said—was really in the rose family, along with a few struggling arid-country shrubs like rabbitbrush and sagebrush. It was pretty simple to pick a path through these, and they could clearly see the cleft bluff ahead and upwards of them.

Ah, yes, upwards. That was the other hand—the trail grew steeper, nearly a thirty-degree incline, and the bare rock gradually gained a litter of small stones, tumbled from the cliffs over millions of years. In places the bluffs wore skirts of gray scree, piles of fallen stones ranging from small boulders to pea-sized pebbles and loose grit.

They stopped to rest twice before reaching a sort of narrow, fairly level shelf running along the base of the bluff. Even there they had to detour around piles of loose rock, but at last, still before noon, they stood before the vertical cleft in the rock face. At first Dipper thought it would be disappointing—as they approached, it looked as though it were only a few feet deep—but then he saw sun rays streaking from the opening.

When they actually reached it and could peer inside, Wendy said, "I don't know, man. Maybe going in there's a mistake. Real narrow."

"I think it widens out farther in," Dipper said, pointing. "Or at least it looks like it does. And I think there might be a kind of valley inside—small one, probably. Listen."

Wendy tilted her head. "Running water," she said. "Waterfall, maybe. But I don't think it's a big one."

"Couldn't be," Dipper agreed, "or it would be spilling out of the opening here. Let's go a little way, anyhow, for a quick look. If it's uncomfortably narrow, we can always turn back and get out. And if it doesn't widen after, say, fifty feet, we'll definitely get out of there."

"Might have to back out, or shed the packs to turn around, though," Wendy said, her hand on the rock wall. "This is barely shoulder-width as it is. But I'm game if you are."

The footing inside the opening grew unsteady—more fallen rock, eons of it, the surface ones rough and barely wind- or water-smoothed at all. However, Dipper said he was surprised it wasn't worse. "All the weathering these cliffs get, you'd think there'd be like sixty or seventy feet of scree. This is only about three feet worth. Be careful, though—the rocks are loose. Don't hurt an ankle."

"Same to you," Wendy said.

Fifty feet they had said, and Dipper counted his strides. "Gonna have to duck," he said, peering past Wendy. Just ahead the fissure narrowed to a crack only inches across—but, paradoxically, at the base it widened out to maybe six feet in a low, nearly Gothic arch, about four feet tall. The good news was that plenty of daylight flowed through that arched opening. So far it had grown dimmer and dimmer as they made their way along the floor of the winding, narrow canyon.

"OK," Wendy said. "I think I can make it with my pack, but I may have to crawl a little ways. I'll go first—"

"Let me," Dipper said.

"No, Dip, I'd feel better if you followed me," Wendy told him. "No offense, but I have a little more hiking experience than you do. So follow me closely, and—wait, what's that up there?"

She pointed to the left-hand side of the archway, where a buttress of green-splotched stone swept and curved upward. Dipper peered over her shoulder, squinting. Pale lichens, probably sun-starved, had spread over the stone, which was a mottled dark gray. "What are you seeing?" he asked.

She took two steps forward and pointed to a spot on the rock about head-high. "Am I nuts, or are these letters?"

Now Dipper saw them—indentations in the stone, hard to make out because they were shallow and the lichens had blurred the edges, but they definitely looked carved, though shallow. Squinting, Dipper read, "C-O-D? No, wait, that's—that's a B, not a D. Cob?"

"Somebody's name?" Wendy guessed. "Maybe somebody came this far, like, a hundred years ago and left his name or his initials?"

"I guess," Dipper said. "The carving must be pretty old, because the lichens—"

"Grow real slow, especially in a shady spot like this. OK, Mr. Cob or whoever, if this is as far as you got, we're gonna break your record. Follow me, Dip, and stay close."

She dropped to all fours and on hands and knees crept beneath the arch, dimming the sunlight. "Not so bad," she called back over her shoulder. "Barely any fallen rock after you get into the wider part—guess the narrow opening above this keeps them out—and I can see grass ahead. This tunnel or whatever doesn't narrow again, and it's about a twenty-foot crawl, I guess. You with me?"

"Right behind you." Dipper edged along at her heels. He saw her stand up. "Whew!" she said. "Huh. It's a hidden valley, all right. Bigger than I thought. It stretches off east and west, and there's trees in here. You need a hand?"

Encumbered by the tent strapped to his backpack, Dipper now and then brushed the ceiling or one of the walls, but never snagged, and he said, "No, I got it." Beyond Wendy's legs he could glimpse a stretch of green.

When he stood up, he said, "Cool in here!"

"Yeah, about fifteen degrees lower than outside. sun's just got to it, I guess. Looks, what, about forty, fifty yards across?"

Dipper gazed ahead. Past some low trees he saw another bluff—well, the same one, really, with a giant-sized crack separating that part from the part they'd just crawled under—stretching up to the blue sky, the crest five or six hundred feet above them. "Probably about that," he said. "It looks longer east to west than it's wide north to south."

"Yeah, can't see the ends," Wendy said. "I wonder if anybody's come this far before."

Dipper shrugged. "Maybe Mr. Cob. Or Miss Cob, whoever."

"We'll keep an eye out for any carvings they left. Like that movie, _Journey to the Center of the Earth, _remember?"

"That was a good movie," Dipper pointed out. "I remember the bad ones we watch together better. But, yeah, I've read the Jules Verne novel the movie was based on. The explorers find a lava tube in an Icelandic volcano that leads them to an underground lost world with dinosaurs and cave-men."

"This isn't much of a lost world. Too small."

"I doubt if many people have ever seen it, though. The Native Americans were scared to go too deep into the valley, and the only way in seems to be that cleft—or maybe rappelling down the sides if you're up on the mesas."

"Yeah, but nobody goes up there, either. And airplanes hardly ever fly over the Valley, so they wouldn't spot it. Might see it on a satellite photo, I guess."

They sat on a boulder for a few minutes, resting and breathing the cool air, which smelled of green, growing things. "I hear the running water," Dipper said. "Where is it?"

"Pretty sure it's a waterfall, and it sounds like it's somewhere off to the left."

"Let's see if we can spot it."

It wasn't far, probably a quarter of a mile, and they became aware that they stood inside a crescent-shaped gorge, narrowing gradually as they followed it. When Wendy spotted the waterfall, a slender silver ribbon above the trees on the opposite side of the gorge, the green valley they found themselves in was probably only thirty-five yards wide.

Dipper tilted his head back. The waterfall seemed to be fed by a creek flowing through the piney forest he could glimpse at the top of the opposite bluff. The stream fell thin, and probably in dry spells it went away altogether. "Where does the water go?" Wendy asked.

"Let's see if we can find out. What are those trees?"

"Klamath plum," Wendy said. "Dwarfs, though. They look about ten, twelve feet tall. They're usually closer to thirty. Come on. Watch the ground, it may be boggy."

It didn't become wetland, though it felt springy beneath Dipper's boots. They had to find a way through the thicket of Klamath plum trees, which bore small, green fruit and which had a greenhouse aroma, a little like rose bushes—but they finally found a rocky spur with only straggling grasses and climbed up that.

The waterfall, its course lined with green algae as far up as they could see, plunged into a pool, not a river—at least no outlet was visible. It was about twelve to fifteen feet across and maybe a hundred feet side to side. "Must drain through a subterranean outlet," Wendy said. "Or maybe it seeps into the soil at one end or the other."

"Yeah, I don't think evaporation would remove enough water to keep the pool from overflowing," Dipper said.

"It wouldn't, not as shady as this part of the gorge is. Want to take a dip?"

Dipper stared at the dark water, nearly black, probably from its basalt bed. "Don't think so. It's pretty cool, and the water would feel close to freezing. Let's walk along the edge, though, and see where it goes."

"East or west?"

"East," Dipper said. They had come from the east, and, truth to tell, he was antsy about straying too far from where the fissure led to the outside world.

They turned right, and after a few more steps, Wendy said, "Almost looks man-made."

Dipper had to agree. A broad ridge ran around the edge of the pool—solid rock, but it looked almost as if someone, many ages ago, had chiseled out a bed for the pool from the basalt bedrock. They walked on this—it was clear of living plants, though a few dead, dry branches littered it here and there—and they saw how the pool gradually narrowed until it curved back against the opposite bluff.

"Well," Wendy said, "no outlet on this end, but if we camp close by, we got water, anyway."

The sharp cry of a bird startled Dipper. It sounded rusty and hoarse, and he couldn't place it—odd, since he'd gained from Wendy a familiarity with the birds and wildlife of the area. "Recognize that?" he asked her.

The bird screamed again. "Sorta like a crow," Wendy said. "Or maybe a camp robber?"

"A what?"

"Camp robber. Gray jay, Canada jay, people call 'em. They're real rare in this part of Oregon, but I've read about them." Another screech, and she shook her head. "Don't know, though. This one sounds big, and camp robbers aren't nearly the size of a Steller's jay. Might be one of them, but it sounds different."

"It is big," Dipper said. "That's it up on the top of that tree, isn't it?"

Wendy shaded her eyes. "Should've brought some field glasses. If that's a jay, it's a deformed one. Doesn't look like either a gray jay or a Steller's jay to me. Got a great big head for its size, and I'd guess it's about as large as a goshawk—eighteen inches, beak to tail."

The bird spread its wings and took to the air—and headed straight toward them.

Dipper's chest clenched, making breathing difficult. As the bird swooped down at them, he saw it had a pinkish-brown, nearly human face—forward-facing, scowling eyes, a hooked yellow beak like an old man's nose that spread into a wide mouth.

"That's no jay," Wendy said as the bird circled and rose with flaps of its wings. "I don't know what it is!"

Then Dipper's blood chilled as, twenty feet above them, the bird circled, staring down at the two.

It screamed in its harsh, rasping voice.

And Dipper would have sworn it said words—or one word, repeated.

"Beware! Beware! Beware!"


	3. Chapter 3

**Exploring the Madlands**

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**(June 11, 2017)**

**3: Stranger Things, Some With Wings**

"What the heck was that?" Dipper asked.

"Don't know," Wendy said. "I've never seen a bird like that before."

"And you know practically every bird there is. I . . . think maybe we'd better get out of this valley."

"Yeah, coming here was a bad idea. This side the trees grow kinda thick, though. We'd better backtrack to the place where we first reached the lake."

On the one hand, Dipper sort of wished they could continue their exploration of this unknown place. On the other, if Wendy was nervous, Wendy, who was a flippin' Corduroy, then they should get out as soon as possible, no doubt about it. "I'm with you," Dipper said. "Let's go."

They turned and headed back, keeping a lookout for the place where they'd first approached the pond and the waterfall. Before they reached it—Wendy was sure she'd recognize the spot—they heard something—something like more than one person crunching through undergrowth somewhere beyond the trees off to their right. Wendy grabbed Dipper's hand and sent him a warning thought: _Stay real still. Breathe easy. Don't say anything._

—_I hear it, too. What is that? People?_

_Don't think so. Too . . . rhythmic. It's big. Sounds like six or eight legs._

—_Couple of wolves?_

_Dude, I think it's just one creature with . . . more than four legs._

—_Got it._

They hunkered down on the stone ledge, crouching side by side. With the rush of the waterfall close by, it was hard to pick out the sounds of—something—striding on the far side of the tangled dwarf trees. And neither of them saw any sign of movement. Still, whatever it was moved even with them, then without slowing or pausing passed them. They saw nothing, heard no growls or roars, nothing that would indicate what kind of creature they might be dealing with, just the unhurried sound of multiple legs marching in step.

Slowly, gradually, the sounds of its striding went away.

_OK, Dip, I think it's all clear._

They stood up. Dipper unholstered his anomaly detector and switched it on. Then changed detection bands until he'd cycled through them all. "Oh, man," he whispered.

Wendy took his hand again. _Give me the bad news, Dip._

—_The meters are all pegged out at max, every one of them._

_What does that mean?_

—_Don't know for sure. It means everything in here is weirder than all the rest of Gravity Falls. In fact, this may be the source of Gravity Falls's weirdness field._

_Come on. I think we'd better move._

They took a step forward—and something yanked Dipper's left foot, sending him sprawling onto the broad rock ledge. Wendy spun, as Dipper rolled onto his back, and he saw her draw her axe and chop down hard, the blade ringing against stone.

Whatever had snagged his ankle dropped free, and he crabbed backwards and then stared at something two feet long and writhing in a puddle of water and greenish-purple slime. "What was that?"

"Octopus or some deal," Wendy said, her voice still low. "I cut through a tentacle."

She helped him up. He saw ripples in the pond, then a round, slimy, mottled green and black basketball-sized head—anyway, it had eyes—broke the surface halfway across and stared at them with slitted pale-gray eyes. The piece of tentacle still feebly thrashed. "Doesn't look like an octopus," Dipper said as he and Wendy backed away from the water. "More like a giant frog."

"Yeah, let's get away now and classify later," Wendy told him. They stepped onto the springy ground. "Come on, I don't think it can follow us onto dry land."

They soon had to cut their way through a wilderness of interweaving giant briars, just as entangling as the tentacle had been. "What—are—these vines?" Wendy asked.

"If you don't know, no way I can identify them," Dipper said. The main branches grew thick as his wrist, and they sent out spiraled concertinas of spiked red-streaked green vines with vicious backward-curving thorns an inch long ready to pierce and snag.

Wendy insisted they continue in the same direction they had been heading. "We didn't have to fight through these when we first reached the water," she said. "We gotta get to the end of the patch sooner or later."

Dipper's left boot began to feel loose, and they retreated a little from the thorns—though not onto the shelf of rock surrounding the pond—so he could tie it.

The rawhide thongs snapped off in his hand. All around the boot, where the tentacle had touched it, the leather had become pale and brittle. "Man," Wendy said, "I'm glad that thing didn't touch your skin! Let's see what we can do. Take off the boot and I'll operate."

Dipper tugged it off. Wendy inspected it. "I know you don't have a spare pair of boots," she said. "Laces?"

"Uh, yeah, I think so," Dipper said. "In my pack."

Wendy took out a knife. "Dig 'em out."

Dipper could remember buying the boot laces when he'd purchased the hiking boots—about two years before—and he was pretty sure that he had dropped the small wrapped bundle down into the pack. He rummaged, feeling his way, and as he did, Wendy cut away the damaged leather, taking nearly three inches off the top of the boot. At last Dipper pulled out the little pack of rawhide laces. "Found them."

Wendy removed the laces on what was left of the boot by cutting through them, then re-laced the remainder, now barely an ankle boot. "That leather where the tentacle grabbed you was petrified," she said. "Like it was a hundred years old and dried out. Just chipped away. I'm gonna trim this lace, it's way too long now. Here you go. See if this will do."

It would have to do. Wendy had left enough lace for Dipper to wrap it around the boot top before tying. He got up and took a couple of steps. "Yeah, this will work," he said. "Too bad about the boot. I've only worn this pair like five or six times."

"Don't sweat it," Wendy told him. "We get out of this, I'll buy you a new pair, as my apology for dragging you in here."

"You didn't drag me," Dipper said. He had picked up the cut-off portion of the boot. The thin tentacle had left two narrow loops of hardened, desiccated, ash-gray leather. He tossed the fragment away. "I came because you said nobody had ever been in here. I was curious."

"Curiosity and the cat," Wendy said. "Come on. I want to get back to that passageway before the sun gets too low."

"Yeah, I could think of better places to spend the night," Dipper said.

They walked further, edging the patch of thorns, the sound of the falls dwindling behind them. Wendy said, "Dip, I think the landscape's changed in here. I don't see that gap in the trees we used."

"The trees moved?" Dipper asked.

"Moved, or more grew super-fast, or something," Wendy said. "Anyway, the vines aren't as thick here. Let's push through. I'll chop down the trees if I have to."

Pushing through was right. It was slow, tough going, avoiding the fierce thorns and then squeezing through the thickly-growing grove of trees. They weren't tall—none of them much more than ten feet, root to crown—but they did form a barrier that impeded them. At one point, a panting Dipper said, "Maybe we should ditch the packs."

"Don't think so," Wendy said, grunting as she felled a couple of saplings that barred their way. "We get caught in this valley, we'll definitely need protection overnight, and even if we get out, we're probably not gonna be able to get back to the car before night. There! I think the trees are thinning out."

Maybe, Dipper thought, they had begun to retreat from the redhead with the axe. True, they didn't see any movement of the trees, but the trunks were spaced more widely now—though the openings angled away, not leading straight to the grassy patch they had crossed, as though the grove was determined to resist their progress.

But they came out at last. Wendy, breathing hard, paused to look around and get her bearings. "We're too far over," she said, pointing. "That's the way out, right?"

Dipper looked. The bluffs pierced by the cleft curved off away from them, but he did spot a dark streak that might be, that probably was, the narrow fissure they had squeezed through. "Yeah, I think that's it," he said. "What time is—mmph!"

Wendy had jerked him to the ground and scrambled to clasp his hand. _Lay still! Something just flew over!_

—_What?_

_Don't know. Just caught a glimpse of it. Might be that big-headed bird, might be something else._

Cautiously, Dipper looked up. Scattered sailing white puffs of cumulus clouds now cluttered the blue sky. At first he saw nothing, but then a dark moving blur caught his eye. It was some flying creature, but not very bird-like. It seemed to be casting wide circles, like a buzzard flying high and expectantly. It looked very odd, something like a five-year-old's sketch of a flying owl, little more than a dark, bowling-ball-sized globe with improbably small wings attached.

But when it flapped closer, Dipper shivered.

—_Wendy, those things hanging from it—_

Wendy had been looking at the writhing, snaky things dangling from the creature's body, too.

_Tentacles, _she told him mentally.

—_Can we fight it off?_

_Not without weapons. Hang on. When it's farthest away, we get to those arrow-wood shrubs._

She led him in a crouch-run for about ten yards, then dropped down. One of the tall shrubs appeared dead, and she used her knife, not her axe, to whittle through the inch-thick stem close to the roots. It came free, and she cleaned off the twigs and the narrow tip, leaving a kind of spear about six feet long. "Not much," she said, "but it'll have to do. You use this one, I'll cut another." She quickly did, then used the knife to sharpen the points even more.

"We jab, we don't toss?" Dipper asked.

"Yeah, 'cause we don't want to lose these. But if that thing gets low enough, try to stick it. Ought to discourage it—"

"Wendy," Dipper said, "uh—look at the cut parts on the plant."

"Oh, man," Wendy groaned. "What have we got into?"

Dipper didn't answer, because he didn't know. All that he knew was that the cut-through stems sticking up from the roots were oozing slowly.

It might have been a thin sap, but from the liquid's consistency and color, he didn't think so.

The wood was—no other word for it—bleeding.


	4. Chapter 4

**Exploring the Madlands**

* * *

**(June 11, 2017)**

**4: Nothing is Real**

"There." Wendy stabbed the sharpened ends of the makeshift spears back into the earth near the bleeding stumps. "Uh, we're sorry if that hurt you, but where we come from, dead wood doesn't bleed. Or live wood, either. Didn't mean to cut you."

"I don't think it can hear," Dipper said.

"Who knows? If it can bleed—hey, Dip—" Wendy tilted her head, her expression quizzical at first, then alarmed. "Listen."

Dipper listened, but all he heard was the waterfall, and he said so.

Wendy gazed back toward the far bluffs and the slender silver ribbon of the falls. "Yeah, that's what I mean, but it sounds different now," she said. "Am I crazy? Look at it. What does it look like to you?"

Well—to be honest—"It's still a waterfall," Dipper said. "But, yeah, it does sound strange now." He squinted into the distance. The sun, now at or at least near noon, broke through the sailing clouds and lit up the face of the cliff and the silver stream of falling water. "Wendy, do you mean—is it that the waterfall is falling _backwards_?"

"Falling up, man," Wendy said. "Running right up the face of the bluff, against gravity."

"I hate to be Star Wars-y," Dipper said, "but I've got a bad feeling about this."

"Yeah, it reminds me of when Bill turned Gravity Falls Falls to blood—"

"And it poured up into the sky," Dipper agreed. "This isn't really that bad, but—it's pretty far on the way to being just as awful. If we can't use the spears, what do we do for weapons?"

"Grab some rocks, man," Wendy said. "Probably that's the best we can do. How's your pitching arm?"

"Lousy," Dipper confessed. He had, for one short season, been a fair baseball player, but only fair, and he had started in the outfield. Still, he thought Wendy was right—rock-throwing was probably the best they could do now.

They searched in the grass and found here and there some scattered, fairly round stones, some roughly the size of billiard balls and reasonably smooth—as though the waterfall pond now and then overflowed and river-smoothed them—and Dipper began to pick up half a dozen for each of them. The fourth one he reached for scuttled out of his way on suddenly-grown yellow-and-red spotted crab legs. He jerked back his hand. "Wendy—"

"I saw it, Dip," Wendy said. "Come on, let's see if we can get to the crack in the wall and out of this place."

He did grab up a couple more stones, gave Wendy four, and kept two for himself—he didn't tell her, but he strongly suspected she would make a better pitcher than he would. They kept wary eyes on the sky, but the tentacled blobby bird, whatever it was, circled higher now, and they started to hope it wouldn't notice them.

Somehow the grass had grown higher—chest-high now—and they waded through it. Dipper said, "We're probably leaving a clear trail."

"Get behind me," Wendy said. "Single file, make our track smaller."

"I don't remember any stretch like this," Dipper said, staring ahead at shapes thrusting up out of the grass.

"Yeah, like a forest died here," Wendy responded. They had neared a cluster of ancient, decayed standing tree stumps, most of them four to six feet tall. Riddled with termite holes, shapeless with rain-swelled wood fibers, they jutted from the grassland like rotting teeth in a giant's jaw.

"Forest fire, maybe," Dipper said.

"Or windstorm." They got close to one of the stumps, and Wendy swung her axe. It hit with a mushy sound, and nearly liquefied wood drooled out. The cut oozed water, not blood, and she grunted. "No good to us. Wood's too punky."

"Huh?"

"Punky. Rotted, you know. Punk wood? Guess that's more of a logger's term, huh?" Wendy seemed to be talking almost in an effort to distract herself. "You find a dry punky log, it's only good for tinder to start a fire. Something like this stuff, so wet it's like cold oatmeal, no good to anybody. Couldn't make a spear out of one of these, or even use it for firewood. Ground's soaking wet, too."

Dipper had noticed—beneath his boots, one sound, one trimmed down, the earth felt muddy now, sucking at his feet with each step they took. Yet they hadn't gone into a low spot—in fact, the ruined copse of trees stood on a broad, low hill. "Maybe we should skirt around that way," he said, pointing away from the stumps.

"We can try. I got a feeling this whole hidden valley in some way knows we're here. I think it's trying to block us from—oh, my God, what's that?"

"I—think it's what you heard before," Dipper said. "But look at it. I mean, that's impossible. It's too big."

"Giant spider, man," Wendy said. "Come on, get behind that last stump and we'll try to hide."

At least around the outlying stump the ground wasn't a slough of gluey mud. They crouched in the tall grass, staring at the monstrosity that came stalking back the way it had apparently gone when Wendy and Dipper had first heard it—a cellar spider, Dipper would have sworn, one of those with a narrow, long body and, in proportion, immensely long legs, not venomous but disturbingly alien in appearance.

Except.

This one's body was five or six feet long, tan, black-striped, and it strode along on eight legs that made that body hang suspended fifteen feet above their heads—and the legs were bent, not extended.

It walked like a wind-up toy, true to its direction but seemingly without purpose or mind. It was going to pass within twenty feet of them, and both Dipper and Wendy held their breath.

Wendy grabbed Dipper's hand—her own was cold—and she sent him a thought: _Now I'm really scared. Look close!_

—_I see it. _Dipper fought back a surge of nausea.

The spider's body was—or perhaps had once been—human. He could see the distorted face—two human eyes and six glittering black eye-spots on the forehead besides, a negligible nose, a gaping mouth with no teeth but with champing chelicerae, chitinous mouth parts halfway between a beak and fangs, and behind them at the corners busily twitching, jointed pincers, organs to tear fragments of food and drag them into the mouth.

The rest of the body looked equally deformed—if the thing had ever been human to begin with, it had been a female. Dipper could see the swellings of nipple-less breasts, but past that, no clear human stomach, groin, or legs, just the long jointed abdomen of a spider. The body looked too heavy for the thin legs, swaying and sagging from the eight joints like a fat man in a hammock. The head, unlike that of a real spider, turned on its neck. The human eyes seemed to be searching the ground.

_I feel sick, too,_ Wendy said telepathically. _That is messed up._

—_Something like that shouldn't be able to walk, even. The inverse-cube law—wait, look, it's passing us. Don't think it noticed us._

_Hang tight for a minute or two, though. We don't know if it can hear us or smell us or whatever._

They crouched in the tall grass, barely breathing and not moving at all. The spider-thing methodically plodded on its apparently endless patrol, skirting the belt of trees that masked the waterfall pool. In five minutes it had followed their curve and had vanished from view.

"We have got to get out of here," Wendy repeated, rising to her feet. She reached to give Dipper a hand up—he had the heavier pack—and braced her other hand against the stump, only to jerk it away as though she had burned herself.

—_What's wrong?_

_This wood, man—it feels wrong! I—don't think this is the stump of a tree!_

Dipper stared at it. It _had_ to be a stump. It was brownish gray, with flecks of darker bark still clinging to its mostly bare surface, it had roots, and was . . . stumpy.

But now that he looked at it, it sure as heck looked like a person frozen in mid-step. It leaned at an angle. And he saw two trunks branching up from the roots, exactly like a person's legs, bent as though frozen in position while taking excruciatingly slow steps. The twin trunks merged into one, a lot like a person's legs merged at the hips into the body. And there was a knob of a head, and what looked like two arms _(they have to be branches_, Dipper thought), and the whole thing looked vaguely like a person caught in the act of walking. Or fleeing.

"Did somebody . . . maybe carve this?" Dipper whispered.

"I think it's natural. Creepy as hell, though," Wendy said. They circled it. Dipper felt cold—he remembered all too vividly the experience of having been transformed into wood by Archibald Corduroy's ghost in the Northwest mansion. To him the figure looked like a victim of the same process, but one that had been left out in the weather for a hundred years.

"Dude, it's got a face," Wendy whispered from the far side.

Dipper joined her and looked. Yes, a human face, rendered rather crudely in wood—beaky nose, gaping mouth, and worst of all, eyes.

Well, two oval knotholes, sanity told him, under an overhanging bridge of brow. Had to be spots where small branches had formed and had decayed and dropped off. Couldn't be eyes.

Except they opened.

Wendy made a sick sound of shock and disgust. Eyes peered blearily at them, glazed and dusty-brown and dry, with pinpoint midnight pupils. The creature's eyelids moved, just them and nothing else.

But tears (sap?) oozed from both eyes and trickled down the chin.

"Are you—are you human?" Dipper asked. "Uh, blink your right eye for yes and you left for no."

Long pause, and then the left eye slowly blinked.

"It understands you," Wendy said.

"Looks like it," Dipper said, trying but not succeeding to slow his galloping heart rate.

"_Were _you human?" Wendy asked.

Right eye slowly blinked, and more tears flowed.

"Did something in this valley—change you?" Dipper asked.

The right eye blinked "yes."

"Oh, man," Wendy moaned. "This just gets worse and worse."

"Can—can you change back?" Dipper asked.

No blinks at all.

"Are you suffering?" Wendy asked.

Another agonizing few seconds, and then the left eyelid winked "no," but the tears not only continued but, if anything, increased their flow.

"Can you change back? Is there any way we can help you?" Dipper asked.

The left eye blinked and remained closed. And then the right eye closed, and the thing became a stump again.

"Oh, man, oh, man," Wendy said. "Come on, Dip. I don't think we can help this—thing."

"Wait," Dipper said. "It's—moving, I think. Look at the mouth."

The mouth was more of a horizontal crack in the wood than anything, but as they stared it did seem to open a fraction—like a ventriloquist's puppet whose joints had stiffened still trying to do the old act even though the mouth hinge had long since rusted.

They heard a creaking sound that might or might not have been an effort to speak.

"Are you trying to tell us something?" Dipper asked.

The right eye opened and then slowly blinked.

"He says yes," Wendy whispered. "What is it, dude? Try hard if you can say something that might help us."

Weirdly, Dipper thought of that scene in _The Wizard of Oz, _one that was not in itself scary but had terrified him when he'd been a six-year-old seeing the movie on TV for the first time.

Lots of kids have been frightened by that old film—the cackling green witch, the awful flying monkeys, the grotesque talking apple trees—but these hadn't bothered Dipper half as much as the Tin Man struggling to force the words "oil can" from his rusted mouth.

As a little kid, Dipper had felt how terrible it would be to stand paralyzed, not capable of moving or even of begging for help from these random passers-by, scarecrow and girl and little dog. Imagining how it would feel to be a prisoner in his own body had given him nightmares for weeks.

And now he had the same kind of feeling as this wooden stump, or whatever was left of the human trapped inside it, tried with evidently immense effort to croak out two barely distinguishable words:

"_Go—o-o . . . ba-a-ack."_

* * *

To be continued


	5. Chapter 5

**Exploring the Madlands**

* * *

**(June 11, 2017)**

**5: Madness Takes its Toll**

The tree-creature, the stump frozen in an attitude of walking, either would not or could not say anything more. The knothole eyes had closed and remained closed. "Let's go," Dipper said nervously, adjusting the pack he carried. "This way, right?"

"Yeah, I think so," Wendy said, sounding worried and half distracted. "What's going on?"

"Don't know," Dipper said. Wendy took the lead again, and he followed. After a few steps, he added, "Maybe this place really is the source of Gravity Falls's weirdness field. Or maybe, I don't know, it's like a volcano—the weirdness bubbles up to the surface in some places, and this is one where it breaks out. The Crawlspace is stranger than the surface, so maybe it all comes from way deep. I . . . I'm just talking. I really don't know."

Wendy spoke without looking back at him: "It's not just the stump that's creepy. The bird looked like it had a kind of human face, too. There's something real nasty about these things. Let's bear left around that stuff ahead. I don't like the looks of it."

Dipper craned to see around her and realized the stuff she meant was a clump of—again—bizarre plants, six or eight feet tall. "That can't be bamboo, can it?" Dipper asked.

"Yeah,_ Fargesia robusta_, I think," Wendy said. "It's not the invasive stuff—some people call it clumping bamboo. It's real hard to grow this side of the Cascades, little too dry for it, and I'm not sure that's the real stuff. Looks like bamboo, but there's something off about it, too. If we wanted spears, we could take a couple mature canes of that, but after the bleeding saplings, I don't think we should. Anyway, I'm wondering, could the stump and the bird be . . . I don't know, mutated humans?"

"Not genetic," Dipper said. "I mean, you know, not hybrids in the normal sense. Magic mutations, maybe. Transformations."

"Yeah, OK, whoa! Hang on. Now what do we do about these things?"

Dipper stopped beside her. "Oh, man," he groaned. Ahead of them the grass suddenly gave way to a curving broad swath of cactus plants—not the endemic round "snowball" variety native to Oregon sagebrush lands. That cactus was a globular plant that never grew larger than a basketball—and usually remained much smaller—but the ones in their path were the big, flabby, flat beavertail kind, like prickly pear—never seen growing wild in Oregon. These stood eighteen inches tall, bare of flowers, and crowded thickly together.

"I don't think we want to wade into that," Wendy muttered. The vicious-looking spines were two inches long, a poisonous-looking yellow with black tips.

"Not with my boot cut down like this. Does this stuff run all the way to the outer cliff?"

"Looks like it. So we circle back around this and the bamboo. I hate backtracking, but I don't want to take any chances in here. We get scratched or stuck—"

"The weirdness might be contagious," Dipper said. "We could get infected. Yeah, I got that. Let's go, then."

Back into the tall grass, varying from knee to shoulder high. They kept an eye out for birds—for both kinds, the big-headed croaker and the high, circling thing with the writhing tentacles—but saw neither. When they started to circle the bamboo thicket, if it was bamboo, they kept a little too close to the stuff for Dipper's comfort, but they were in a hurry.

"The wind's not blowing," Dipper said. "But look at the plants."

They were stirring as though buffeted by fitful breezes. They bent—in the direction of the two explorers. They were more like animals than plants, Dipper thought, or like sea anemones with their flexible tentacles. They _looked _like plants, but moved more like—

Bees zinged past his head.

"Get down!" Wendy said, shoving him to a crouch.

"What's wrong?" Dipper asked.

"The bamboo culms—that's what you call the canes—they're bending over and shooting at us!" she said. "Don't move, hold still for just a second."

They hunkered in the grass, hidden—at least they couldn't see the bamboo clump, so Dipper assumed it couldn't see them—and Wendy tore a narrow strip off the tail of her shirt, wrapped it around her fingers, and plucked something out of Dipper's backpack. "This stuck in your pack, Dip. I'm guessing it's probably poisonous, so don't touch the tip."

She held a dart—a three-inch long spine, straight and sharp as a big needle. It was pale green, but the tip was a blackish red and oozed a drop of liquid.

"I thought I heard bees," Dipper said.

"It was these things. The bamboo canes bend over and, I think, shoot these out of the tips. This is gonna be tedious, but don't stand up until we get out of range." She carefully stuck the spine point-down into the dirt and then pushed it as far as she could with the toe of her boot. "I'm gonna move away from the bamboo grove. Stay close."

They duck-walked through the grass, Wendy clearing a path as best she could with her axe, which was not really suited for scythe work. They went over another low dome of a hill, and then cautiously Wendy raised her head and peeked. "OK, man, I think they can't see us to aim now. Come on, we gotta find the way out."

Dipper stood and asked her, "You know the stump? You heard what it said?"

"'Go back,' I think. It wasn't a real voice," Wendy told him.

"Yeah, that was it. The letters we saw carved outside the entrance—"

"C-O-B."

"I think probably we misread the first letter. I think probably it was meant to be G-O, B—"

"Oh," Wendy said.

Now, someone gravely wounded carving a warning into a stone wall would not very likely carve out "Arrggggh" before dying. But maybe, just maybe, someone trying to leave a warning might get as far as G, O, B, before—something bad happened. Before something got him. "Yeah," Dipper said.

Wendy shook her head. "GO BACK. Damn! I wish we'd thought of that before getting in here."

"Sorry," Dipper said.

"Not your fault, man. Mine for dragging us in here. I thought it would be a fun adventure, not a nightmare." She wiped sweat from her face. Now that the sun was high, the narrow valley had heated up. "Dang it, we should be able to see the crevice from here!"

"Maybe not," Dipper said. "Except for the tunnel at the bottom, the crack was real narrow on this side. And the grass is so high I can't see the base of the cliff."

"Yeah, but the grass wasn't nearly this high when we first came through," Wendy said. "I think this place _wants _us, man."

"Wants us dead?"

Wendy looked nervous. "That's the scary part. I think it just wants us to stay and turn into birds or octopuses or trees or something. It wants to claim our—well, I guess our souls."

Dipper hitched up his pack again. It was beginning to weigh heavy on his shoulders. "Let's get close to the cliff. The waterfall was ahead and off to our right when we first came through. Right now it's still to our left when we face it, so we have a way to go."

"Stay sharp," she warned. "If this place wants us—it's gonna make getting out as hard as it can."

"We can beat it together," Dipper said.

"Hope so. Here we go."

* * *

Six hundred miles away, while playing a video game on the family-room TV, Billy Sheaffer had suddenly, in the middle of the day, felt so sleepy he couldn't stay awake. He switched off the game without even saving and went to ask his mom if it would be all right for him to take a nap.

She ruffled his hair. "Are you sick?" she asked.

"I don't think so." His eyelids, both the ones covering his only useful eye and the ones over his prosthetic, kept wanting to close. "I'm just—just tired." He failed to stifle a yawn.

His mom's cool palm pressed against his forehead. "You feel a little bit warm," she said. "Go to your room and lie down. I'll be up in a minute."

His feet felt heavy as he plodded up the stair to the room that once upon a time had been Dipper's, before the Pines family had bought the larger house down at the end of the street and had made the short move. His sisters were out somewhere—the neighborhood was a welcoming and safe one, and the girls had lots of friends. In the summers, they were always out somewhere.

On the other hand, Billy had a harder time making friends, and in the summers, when Dipper and Mabel went up to Oregon, he always felt lonely. He got to the bedroom, kicked off his sneakers, and lay on top of the covers without taking off his clothes or climbing under the sheets.

His mom came in. "OK, under the tongue, champ."

"Aw, Mom." But Billy took the thermometer beneath his tongue. They had a digital ear thermometer, but his mom's mom had been a nurse for many years, and Mrs. Sheaffer had inherited her confidence in the old clinical thermometer. It tasted of a strong mouthwash, mostly alcohol, that she kept just for disinfecting it.

She kept track of the minutes on her watch, then took the thermometer out, studied it closely, and smiled. "Ninety-eight point six, champ. Right on the money." She shook the mercury down with an expert snap of her wrist. "I guess you aren't sick. How long do you want to nap?"

Billy could barely form the words: "I don't know. Until I wake up, I guess."

"It's just after one. Tell you what, I'll let you sleep until five, and then I'll check on you. If you're still asleep, I won't wake you until dinner time."

"Fine," he murmured, already feeling as if he were sinking into a deep pit of wool, becoming insulated from the world.

"OK. Get some rest," his mom said. She went to the window, pulled down the shade, and then clicked off the overhead light. Briefly she stooped to pick up his shoes. "Billy, please untie your shoes before taking them off. Billy?"

He was already asleep. His mom smiled, pulled the bows in the shoes loose, put the sneakers on the floor beside his bed, and kissed his forehead. Then she closed the door.

And by that time, Billy was dreaming.

It was one of those where he knew he was only dreaming. His dad had told him these were loose Sid dreams, and when Billy was curious, spelled it so his son could look up _lucid_ online. Billy now thought of the state as one where you were asleep enough to see and hear bizarre stuff, but just awake enough to sort of stand outside yourself and watch yourself and know none of what was going on was real. Which was pretty close to the medical definition, at that.

Billy wasn't sure where he was in the dream—it looked a little like his own room, but distorted, as though the ceiling were thirty feet tall, and everything had been elongated or squooshed, and all of it was in shades of black and white.

Except—

He squinted. In the dream, he wasn't lying down, but standing in a room that constantly expanded and sort of melted away around him. With his only good eye he peered into the distance at a shining yellow pyramid.

But it wasn't planted in the sands of Egypt. He knew lots about Egyptian pyramids. He'd once gone through a months-long fascination with them and had read everything his dad, a college professor, could bring home from the library about them.

Before his interest waned, Billy had collected pictures of pyramids from magazines and printouts from the computer and had made his own scrapbook. He had doodled pages full of pyramids. He'd learned the names and locations of nearly a hundred of them, from the Great Pyramid of Giza to ones hardly anyone had heard of, like the ruined S9 and S10 structures of Abydos.

This one was different. For one thing, it . . . floated in air, like a helium balloon. And it was tiny.

No, correction, it must have been a long way off, because it grew in apparent size, evidently floating closer and closer. Billy thought it was coming fast, and yet the approach took an astonishingly long time. It felt like a thousand years in his dream.

And then, somehow, the pyramid was only a triangle, floating a couple of feet off the sand not far from him and about his own size. Somehow he was no longer in bed, no longer even in his room, but stood on a vast desert of rolling dunes.

He wasn't afraid. More curious. He reached out to touch the floating yellow triangle—

And jerked his hand back when it opened an eye and stared at him.

For a long moment the two merely faced each other.

And then a strange, unfamiliar voice—yet one that Billy almost recognized, like a tune you know but can't quite hum—a high-pitched voice sharp with mischief and a humor that felt edged like a knife said, "Well, well, wellwellwellwell well! We meet at last."

Billy wanted to ask this apparition "Who are you?"

And yet what came out, what he heard himself say, was—

"Who are we?"


	6. Chapter 6

**Exploring the Madlands**

* * *

**(June 11, 2017)**

**6: In Over Their Heads**

* * *

"Look, kid," said Bill Cipher, still hanging in mid-air, "you know you're dreaming, right?"

"Yeah," Billy said. "This is a weird one. Not scary, but crazy."

"All right," Cipher said. "So let's say you're dreaming a screamy little dream right now. Dreams can't hurt you, am I right or am I right?"

"I guess you're right. But—your name's Bill? Like me? William?"

"Negatorioso, kid. Call me just plain Bill. You're fated to know me sooner or later, and I thought it was about time the Bill came due. Bill came due. You are not laughing."

"Am I supposed to?"

Bill muttered, "This is gonna be my vessel for the next seventy years? The Axolotl owes me big for this." But in a louder voice, he said, "Never mind. Mind you, we'll get to know each other. Other things concern us right now. Now is the time for every good Bill to come to the aid of his party. Party's on, and the clowns are winning."

"Why are you starting every sentence with the first word of the last sentence?"

"Sentence me to prison! Sheesh, kid, I'm throwing in a little style. Let's get down to brass tacks and be brassy and tacky. You like Dipper Pines, right?"

"He's my best friend," Billy agreed. He looked around at the gray sands beneath a gray cloudless sky. "Where are we, anyway? Usually my dreams are in color."

With his single eye half-closed in a bored yet irritated way, like Garfield the cat's, Bill snapped his fingers and suddenly everything flashed in all hues of the spectrum and then some, and the world glared at Billy like an explosion in the dye department of a Hawaiian shirt factory. "Too much!" he said, holding up a hand to shield his eye.

Bill snapped his fingers again, and the monotone grays returned. Except for him. He was still yellow. And Billy was still pink, with yellow hair, a yellow tee shirt, blue jeans, and white socks. "Dullsville, but it's OK with me if it is with you. Focus now. Listen, Billy, we have all the time in the world, so let's do this quick: Dipper's in deep deep doo-doo."

Billy resisted an urge to snicker. He told himself sternly that he wasn't six any more. "Um. What do you mean?"

"I mean Old Man Weirdness got ahold of him. Dipper's got the Boogey Man Fever and the Transformation Flu! He's between a rock and a rolling hard place, kid, and I can't get to him, not where he is, so it's up to you. I want you to save his life. Red's too."

"Huh? Red? You mean Wendy? I like Wendy."

"You know, when the time comes, I hope you can latch onto a girl who'll be as good for you as she is for Pine Tree. Or a guy, I'm not picky. But listen, kid, you gotta get a message to him. I'm stuck here all alone, I ain't got the dime and there's no time for the phone—Jeeze, you got me doing Bee Gees riffs now!"

"What? Me?" Billy asked. "Listen, I don't even know what—"

"You picked it up from your dad," Bill said. "I can't explain, but I'm in the dream world, and I have to build on what materials you give me. Your memories and thoughts and notions are the planks I got to build with."

"I don't even know what you mean."

"Join the party, kid. Anyway, here's the 411—what does that even mean, 411? The basic info you got to know, and the more you know, the farther you go. Dipper and Red—Wendy—got themselves stuck in a high-weirdness zone that's seriously messing with them. I think I know how to get them out in more or less one piece, or at worst, two pieces, but I can't get through to Pine Tree. I think you can. Care to me listeningly—I'm losing it, I can only do this once—and do exactly what I say and say exactly what I do. Strike that, reverse it. Listen up!"

And a fascinated Billy, who had started to think that Bill Cipher was not only interesting but somehow very familiar, listened as hard as he ever had to anything. Cipher talked intently, seriously, and very fast, and Billy didn't miss a word of it.

* * *

By three in the afternoon, according to Dipper's phone—no bars, but it still worked as a watch—he and Wendy had snuck, ducked, hidden, and crept to a spot where, finally, they could just glimpse the dark vertical line of the split cliffs—but the passage back out still lay far ahead.

"This place isn't that big," Wendy complained. "It's like distances have become, I don't know, elastic or something!"

"I'm starting to wonder if all these creepy things we keep seeing are illusions," Dipper told her. The pack on his back weighed a ton, and he was sweating now as the afternoon sun heated the little valley more and more.

"Dude, that thing _ate_ part of your boot," Wendy reminded him. "I'd say they're way too real for comfort."

"I keep wondering if maybe we're just crazy," Dipper said. "But I think that's part of the danger. Making us believe it's just illusion and tricks, when there's real stuff that could hurt us. What I don't understand is why whatever it is even wants us to stay here."

"I think it's the whole valley that wants us," Wendy said. "Like the land has consciousness all its own. Maybe it's lonely. Or maybe it's bored and just wants us for playthings."

"I'm definitely gonna have to give Grunkle Ford a full report," Dipper said. "This may be the ultimate source of the weirdness that he always looked for, and I'll tell him about it. If we get out."

"_When_, Dip," Wendy corrected. "Hey, let me carry the tent for a spell, OK?"

"You know what?" he asked, shrugging out of the backpack straps. He untied the tent roll and dropped it on the ground. "Let's just leave it. Better that way, but I'll miss it, because it was a Christmas present for you. Still, I'd rather get us out alive than try to lug it out and having it slow us."

"Cool with me," Wendy said. "I'll buy you another one."

"We'll go in together on it," he said, trying to sound light-hearted. "It'll be a pre-wedding present to each other."

"A tent that we go in together," Wendy said with a grin that hardly looked forced at all. "Gotta say I like the sound of that!" She took out her phone and checked it for maybe the tenth time. "Hm. Still no bars here, either. Dude, let's ask Fiddleford McGucket to design us, I don't know, a phone that doesn't need cell towers. One that works by hooking up to satellites or something."

"Bet he could do it," Dipper said. She helped him back into his pack, and they walked away from Dipper's tent. Despite knowing that it was more practical to leave it than to carry it, Dipper's heart gave him a pang of regret. It had been a present from Wendy, and he and she had spent some nights under the stars inside the tent.

Still—

"Grass is getting shorter," Wendy pointed out. That was true—it was less than knee-high now.

"Easier walking," Dipper said.

"Less cover, though."

Dipper scanned the sky. The clouds had mostly passed over, and the blue sky arched empty of strange flying things. Ahead of him, Wendy stopped short, and he blundered into her. "Steady, Dip," she whispered. "Look over there. What's that?"

She pointed. He saw the oddly moving grass fifty or so yards ahead. "Snake?"

Wendy shook her head. "No venomous snakes in Oregon except for the western rattlesnake, and that's too big a disturbance to be one of those. More the size of a big python or boa."

The movement in the grass wove a sinuous trail not directly toward them, but in their general direction. Dipper could make out nothing more than the motion of the grass, no sign of scales, eyes, or fangs. "Could be some kind of monster snake. Let's avoid it. Keep an eye on it."

That meant taking a zig-zag path toward the tunnel out of the valley, a process which ate up time. They never once caught sight of the snake—if that's what made the grass wave and bend—but it seemed to be pacing them, now and then changing direction and forcing them off their line of march.

Then, as if sensing them, whatever it was moved right at them, whipping back and forth and picking up speed. "Run, Dip!" Wendy said. "Get to the bare rock over there. If we can see it, we can fight it!"

He didn't sprint—too tired for that—but he stayed beside Wendy as they scrambled up a smooth, flattish dome of gray stone. The thing in the grass at first seemed to aim for them, but when the grass was still just high enough to hide it, it sheered away. "Let's get to the top," Wendy said. "Maybe from there we can see it."

Dipper, trying to keep one eye on the moving grass, backed toward her, heard her yelp and then heard a splash. "Wendy!"

She had vanished, but then he saw her arm waving frantically.

What had happened, he saw, was that the little rock dome was a cinder cone or something like it—a long-dead volcanic fumarole or geyser, maybe. But like a gigantic cup, it held a central crater six feet across and full of water. Wendy had fallen in, and her heavy pack had dragged her under. But her arm, from elbow to hand, broke the surface and thrashed free. Dipper lay on his belly and grabbed her wrist and hauled her up, dripping and spluttering.

With her long hair plastered over her backpack, she got her hands on the rock and add her efforts to Dipper's and between the two of them, they hoisted her out. She lay on her stomach for a minute, panting and coughing up water. "Stupid," she said after a final hacking fit. She pushed herself up and sat, water dripping from her hair and clothes and running in crooked rivulets down the dome of rock. "I know better than to look behind me while I'm walking!"

"Are you OK?" Dipper asked.

"Yeah, just soaked, along with the food and all my spare clothes, I guess," Wendy grumbled. "'S OK, I'll dry out. I'm not hurt. No harm done—oh, no!"

"What?" he asked.

She held up her left hand, her face a mask of grief. "Dipper, I lost my ring!"

"Hang on," he said. He lay on his stomach again and peered down into the crater. The pool lay crystal-clear, and through the shimmering water he saw an unmistakable gleam on black sand at the bottom. "I see it," he told her. "Water's only about six or eight feet deep. I'll get your ring for you."

"Dipper, no, let me."

"You keep watch. In a fight, you're better than I am." Dipper shed his pack, took off his boots and all his clothes but his boxer briefs. "Don't think this'll be hard."

He didn't dive in, but slithered in, head first, pausing to hyperventilate and take one last great deep gulp of air before the last plunge. Then, eyes open, he slipped into the pool and frog-kicked downward.

The ring shone as if with a brilliant light of its own, and he closed his hand on it. Then he balled his whole body up, rolled, kicked off the bottom, and broke the surface. "Got it!"

Wendy pulled him out. He returned the ring to her, and she hugged him.

"Thanks, Dipper. I owe you big. I wouldn't lose this for the world."

Dipper pulled his jeans back on. "Couldn't let my fiancée lose her ring," he said. "Cold water. Makes me kind of tingly. Here, let me put it on your finger."

"Thanks," she said, holding out her hand.

Dipper tried. The ring would not fit.

"What's wrong?" she asked.

"I don't know. Are your fingers swollen?"

"Shouldn't be. They do kinda look stumpy, though," she said. "Dip, put the ring in your pocket and let's just go. We'll dry out on the way. I want to get out of this place."

"Yeah," he said. He put the ring in the side pocket of his cargo jeans and zipped it firmly. He quickly got into his boots again and donned shirt, pack, and cap. "Let's go."

The snake in the grass, or whatever it was, had apparently gone away. They kept near the base of the cliffs, though that meant scrambling over loose stonefalls now and then, and concentrated on their goal—until after ten minutes, both of Dipper's boots started to rub and feel loose.

"Something's wrong," he said.

"What?" Wendy asked, turning toward him. She saw the way he was staring at her, and her green eyes widened in shock.

"Dipper, man, your hair's changing color," she said.

"Wendy—you're—look at your hands!"

She did and yelled in alarm.

Her fingers were shorter and stubby, and they had sprouted claws.

Claws and red fur.

As had her face.

It had changed, was still changing, was growing a muzzle.

By now, into his sixth summer of Gravity Falls strangeness, Dipper instantly knew what was happening.

Wendy was morphing into a werewolf.


	7. Chapter 7

**Exploring the Madlands**

* * *

**(June 11, 2017)**

**7: The Animal In Me**

* * *

"Don't look," she pleaded.

Dipper, having taken his feet—now little hoofs—from his socks and boots, turned his back. "I'll repack while you do that," he said.

"This is hard without a real thumb!"

He heard fabric being cut. He made as quick a selection as he could: No utensils, leave all the food, take two sleeping bags, take one change of clothes each. Behind him he heard rustling.

When he finished, his pack held everything they might need. For one day, anyway. After that—

He didn't want to think of after that.

"OK," she said. "Finished. I had to cut my jeans so—" her voice trailed off.

He turned around. As a werewolf—well, not really that, because she'd turned into an upright bipedal animal—but as a Wendy-wolf, she had the same redder-than-copper hair she'd had before, though now it was all over her body. Her feet were the most wolfish part he could see—her legs now crooked like a dog's or a wolf's, each foot now just the ball of the foot and the toes. That was wolflike. As was the big bushy tail—more like a fox's, really—and the sharp muzzle and sharp ears. Her hands were intermediate between human and animal—stumpy little thumb, not a dewclaw, and four short, clawed fingers. But the eyes were Wendy's eyes, and the mane was her hair.

"I'm horrible," she moaned.

"No. Inside you're my Magic Girl. We'll leave all this stuff—want to eat before we start?"

He gave her all the jerky. She ate it—eagerly, the way a dog does—and caught herself. "I'm sorry!"

"It's the form trying to take over," Dipper said. "You can fight it. Ulva doesn't lose the human part of her when the full moon comes."

"I'd change back if I could!"

"So would I," Dipper said. He had eaten four granola bars. "I don't know if I can carry this pack, but I'll try. Help me on with it."

"I got it."

She managed to get her arms through the straps, then went on all fours—it was hard for her to lean way over with her ankles elongated the way they were—and he tightened and cinched. "Too heavy?"

"No. Still got my human strength, I guess. Axe?"

"I'll carry it. Ask for it if you need it."

"Where's our hats?"

He said, "In the pack. Don't think I'd leave them behind, did you? Boots, too, and a pair of socks each. We'll need them when we change back."

"If, you mean."

"When," he said firmly. "What are you doing?"

She had not yet risen from her crouch. "Sorry. It's just that, the way you are—you smell so _good!_"

He reached out to stroke her cheek. "Your eyes are so beautiful," he said. "That's one thing that gives me hope."

She put her paw-hand on the back of his and held his palm close to her cheek. "That we can still see colors," she said.

"That's the smallest part of it," he told her. He wished he could kiss his girl.

But their mouths were no longer shaped for human kissing.

* * *

Billy woke in his own room, which for just a couple of seconds he saw in black-and-white. "Whoa," he muttered, rolling onto his side and getting out of bed. The floor rocked under his feet—not an earthquake, just waking dizziness. He looked at his alarm clock—not much past four, so dinner was still about three hours off.

He had been bugging his mom and dad for a phone—what if there was an emergency?—but so far they were resistant. "When you turn thirteen," Dad had said firmly.

But his mom and dad both had cell phones. There were also the house phones, on the same plans, but generally Mom and Dad docked their cell phones when they were home and switched the ringer over to the house number.

So . . . wait, maybe it was a dream.

But it had not felt like a dream. And something inside Billy told him that Dipper was in bad need of help.

He wasn't yet twelve. His personal Jiminy Cricket hadn't yet fully kicked in. Questions of right and wrong and ends and means didn't yet consume him.

In other words, he slipped into his parents' bedroom and snitched his mother's phone from the docking station. He heard her in the kitchen, talking to someone. Standing in the doorway, he saw that she was preparing a roast for the oven and his sister Mira was helping. His other sister, Mira's twin Mina, was missing.

"You're awake," Mom said as Billy stood there, her cell phone in his hip pocket.

"Can I help?" he asked, purposely sounding draggy.

"We got it covered," Mira said. "You sick or something?"

"Just real tired for some reason," Billy said.

"He doesn't have a fever," Mom told Mira.

"Just feeling lonely?" Mira asked.

"Yeah," he said. "Kinda. 'Cause Dipper and Mabel are gone."

"You want to go to a movie with Mina and me tonight?"

"You guys got dates?" he asked.

"Yeah, but you can be the chaperone."

"No, thanks. I don't want to see all that smoochie-face stuff."

"Mira?" Mom asked, though she sounded more amused than surprised.

"He's kidding, Mom," Mira said. "This enough onions?"

"Plenty," Mom said.

"I think what would make me feel better," Billy said, "is to go over to the park. OK if I ride my bike over?"

"Don't talk to—"

"Strangers, yeah, I know. And I won't. Uh, Mom? OK if I borrow your phone? I mean, I don't think I'm really sick, but if I started feeling weird—"

"It's on the dock," Mom said. She glanced at the clock. "Be back in an hour. That's five-fifteen."

"I know, Mom," he said. "Thanks."

Huh. For some reason having permission to borrow the phone—something he hadn't even planned—made him feel better. Maybe because it was what a good person would do, he couldn't figure it out. He stopped once more, in the room Dad used as a home office, to go through the file cabinet (his dad was a compulsive organizer) to find something he needed. He borrowed that too and then rode his bike the mile and a half to the park.

He dutifully locked the bike to a stand—though who would steal his ordinary, run-of-the-mill, not-tricked-out twenty-four inch bike he couldn't imagine—and walked the exercise trail, stepping out of the way of joggers and strollers until he got to the spot he called his hideout.

Well—it worked as a hideout. Anyone looking for him could have found him in about twelve seconds, he supposed, but ordinarily no one was looking and he had never been found in there.

It was, basically, a circle of shrubs with a clearing in the center, downhill from the Japanese tea house. If he stood, he could see the decks around the structure, but crouching or sitting, he was in his own circle of the world. He spread out the map of Oregon, as Bill had told him to do in the dream. It took some searching, but he found the dot marking Gravity Falls on the roadmap.

Then—this was the hard part—he closed his only good eye and tried to see through the invisible eye in his forehead.

"I don't have one of those," he had protested to Bill in his dream.

"Sure you do, kid. You just never used it before."

So, kneeling with knees holding down the map, holding a twig with the end pressed against the dot of Gravity Falls, Billy Sheaffer tried to open that unused mental eye. He murmured, "Dipper . . . Wendy. Dipper . . . Wendy," over and over, trying to concentrate.

Somehow, and he didn't know how or even when, that turned into "Pine Tree . . . Red."

And he got a glimpse that scared him so much he jerked right out of the mild trance. They had changed.

It was too late, he thought.

But a voice that was only in his head said thinly, "No such thing, kid. Dive back in there."

* * *

In their changed shapes, they reached the tunnel. They crept through it, Wendy dragging the pack behind her. They emerged on the far side, into the real world (as real as Gravity Falls ever got, anyhow) and staggered down the rocky hillside and to a patch of grass, where they collapsed in the afternoon sun. They lay side by side, a wolf-girl in green shirt and jeans cut off at the knees—the knees were tricky now, and she needed more freedom in the lower legs—and with a slit cut for the brushy tail—and a boy who had somehow shrunk so he was no longer as tall as she, but a couple of heads shorter, a boy with floppy ears and a furry coat of his own.

"I'll keep my shorts on," he promised her, and then pushed his jeans down and squirmed out of them. Like Wendy's legs, his own had changed structure more drastically than the rest of his body.

He stared at them, appalled. They were wrong and alien.

Wendy reached out a paw—a hand—and said, "It's OK, Dip. It's OK."

"I thought maybe we'd change back in the tunnel," he told her. "Wendy—I don't know what to do!"

"Hold my hand."

They discovered the difficulty. Now their hands were furred, all but the pads. They had to clasp palm-to-palm to get the skin contact they needed.

"Whoa," Dipper said aloud as a flood of her new perceptions and instincts flooded into him.

_I'm a carnivore, Dipper. I can't help it!_

—_I smell like food?_

_You smell me like danger._

—_We're not animals, though._

_I keep telling myself. Dipper, I think maybe I better go back into that valley and let you try to get help._

—_You go, I go. We're in this together, Wendy._

_I love you, man._

—_Love you too. Don't worry, Wendy. We'll rest and then we'll go back in the car and ask Ford—_

_You think you could drive? I don't think I can. I'd wreck us for sure if I tried. We could try it cross-country, hiking out, but we got no food and—I could kill and eat something, but—if I did—_

—_You'd be giving up, yeah, I see. Well, we can at least get to a spot where we have bars on our phones and call for help. But we stick together._

_It's dangerous, man._

—_Hold onto our humanity. That's all we can do._

_I wonder if anybody we call would even recognize our voices. I can understand you, and you can me, but we don't sound like ourselves. I'm all growly, and you—_

—_Yeah. Funny, I don't feel any urge to browse or anything. Just too scared to be hungry, I guess. But I know! I'll call Mabel We've been through so much supernatural crap, she'll believe us. She'll get in touch with Ford._

_Guess we gotta try. OK, Dip, let's get up. If we get to the bottom of this hill and climb up to the top of the next, we might get one or two bars._

—_Just rest a minute more._

Dipper put his arms around her—though not all the way around—and pulled her close. He looked up at her.

She said, in an embarrassed voice, "You feel them, huh? I got six now! I hate this."

He stroked her back. "It's OK," he reassured her. "I know this isn't who you really are. Or me, either. I—"

"Dude," she asked, "are you stroking my _tail_?"

"I—guess I am," he said, drawing his hand away. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean too—it's just so silky—"

She wriggled. "You can do it if you want to," she said in a growly whisper. "It's not like I hate it!"

And, though it wasn't really satisfactory for either, they even tried kissing.

But then Dipper's phone chimed, startling both of them.


	8. Chapter 8

**Exploring the Madlands**

* * *

**(June 11, 2017)**

**8: Just One Chance**

* * *

_A little before that . . . _

Teek was driving Mabel back from the municipal pool, where they'd spent a few hours splashing and horsing around and landing in pool jail for an hour for excessive public displays of affection, which they continued in the jail until Poolcheck evicted them altogether.

Mabel, pressing her finger into her forearm to check for sunburn (she wasn't burned; in fact, she was getting a nice tan), heard her phone go off and she twisted around to retrieve her purse from the back seat. "Hi, you've reached Mabel. At the beep just keep talking, 'cause this is not a recording. Beep!"

Teek, hearing only her end of the conversation, wondered what in heck was going on:

"Wait, wait, you're going too fast, I can't—what? Oh, hi, how are you? How are Mira and—what? Uh, they're camping. Yeah, not surprised, Wendy likes to camp like forty miles from no—tomorrow afternoon, probably—what? Oh my gosh! Yellow? How many eyes? No, no, no, tell me. I don't care, it's important! Huh? Uhh. . . text that to me, I'll never remember all of it. Teek, turn in at Ford's driveway. No, that's my boyfriend, remember Teek? Yeah, got it. No, I'm taking it seriously. Text me. Sure I will. Hang on until you hear from me."

Teek, at the wheel, asked, "Did you say-?"

"Ford's place, next driveway, you know where it is—there."

Teek slowed for the turn. "OK. Uh, Mabel, what's up?"

"Bill Cipher. We get one good clear Sunday afternoon, and he has to butt in and mess everything—but your family wasn't in town for Weirdmageddon. It's a Gravity Falls thing. Yay, both their cars are here! Do I look OK?"

Teek parked next to Ford's dark-blue Lincoln. "Wha—uh, you look, you know, like you've just been to the pool!"

Mabel patted her hair, which was still damp. "Should've got dressed. Too late now!"

In fact, Mabel was respectable. She was wearing her pink two-piece bathing suit, pink-and-white flip-flops, and, as a cover, an old Hawaiian shirt that her dad had discarded and she had rescued. It had a bird theme, but since Alex Pines had worn it on his and Wanda's honeymoon, over the years the birds had faded to the point where it was hard to tell a toucan from a shoebill. But it had worn so soft that Mabel liked wearing it, even if it did hang around her like a pup tent.

She spilled out of the car and Teek followed her more slowly. He was decent, too—he'd pulled on his blue tee shirt, and his swim trunks, though still damp, could have been mistaken for shorts. He couldn't abide flip-flops and wore brown sandals without that thong that stuck between big toe and index toe—is that even right? Between the market piggy and the stay-at-home piggy, then. The sandals were open-toed, no thong to blister him.

Mabel didn't bother knocking, even though for all she knew Stanford and Lorena were enjoying a conjugal romp on the big living room sofa. "Grunkle Ford!" she yelled as she barreled through the door.

Saving everyone's blushes, we note that in point of fact Stanford and his wife Lorena were companionably seated on said sofa, she reading a novel, he reading a supposedly factual account of Bigfoot and snorting from time to time as he annotated the book with derisive marginal comments. He was a habitual annotator, which is why he preferred paper over electronic books.

Oh, and Stanford and Lorena were dressed—casually, she in cool pale-green slacks and a white top, he in khakis and a light-blue polo shirt.

"Mabel?" Lorena asked, standing up. "What in the world?"

"What else?" Mabel asked. "Dipper and Wendy are in trouble."

"Where are they?" Stanford asked, marking his place in the book with his ballpoint pen. "And what's their problem?"

"A, I don't know where they are, out in the woods someplace camping, and B, I don't know what the problem really is, but I got it from a reliable source that they need help."

"Hi, Dr. and Mrs. Pines," Teek said. He had just come in behind Mabel.

"Would you kids like something to drink?" Lorena asked with the reflexes of a born hostess.

"Lemonade!" Mabel said.

"I'll make a pitcher," Lorena said, heading to the kitchen.

"Wait, wait," pleaded Stanford. "What source?"

"Bill Cipher," Mabel said, flopping down in an armchair. "Via Billy Sheaffer."

"Cipher! It _would_ be him," Ford muttered. In fact, though he'd heard about the Axolotl's plan for offering Cipher one last chance, he had a deeply smoldering resentment and a lively burning distrust of the triangular transdimensional demon. "All right, what does he say?"

"Just got a text from him," Mabel said. Her phone had dinged. "I'm gonna call him back and let you talk to him. Cipher came to him in a what do you call it, lucid dream, he says. You can get the details from him. Hello, Billy? Yeah, got it, thanks. Listen, I want you to tell our Grunkle Ford just what you told me about Dipper and Wendy. Don't be scared, he sometimes sounds like a grumpy-grump, but he's really smart and he'll know what to do."

"Hello?" Ford said, taking the phone and trying to sound nice. Unfortunately, he wasn't used to talking to kids, except for his relatives, and he came off sounding like someone trying to imitate Mr. Rogers and instead doing a fair impression of Clint Eastwood—yeah, "Hello, neighbor, do you feel lucky, punk?" Like that.

He heard an obviously scared kid's voice, not yet breaking into adolescence: "Uh, h-hi, Dr. P-Pines. Uh, I had a dream about Bill and he warned me. He said if I t-talked to you to tell you this." He cleared his throat, and then said, "Hello, Fordsy, long time no see. Sixer, listen to this kid. We're on the level, he and I. Much as it hurts me to say it—honest."

Ford said, in a less aggressive tone, "That's Bill Cipher, all right What did he tell you?"

He grabbed the Bigfoot book and the pen, opened the book to the flyleaf, and started to scribble notes. That may appall book lovers, but really the volume had obviously been written for the money by a guy who might have flown over some woods in a plane once but whose lack of acquaintance with the wild glared obviously from every page, and so its use as a notebook probably was the best the book could hope for. At least it was useful.

When he hung up, he looked curiously anxious and simultaneously excited. He took Mabel's phone from her and read Billy's long and sometimes strangely autocorrected text. "I never explored the very edges of the Valley," he muttered. "I missed that. A secret, separate valley overflowing with weirdness! Cipher told Billy to call it 'The Trough of Transmutation.' Any living thing venturing into it risks metamorphosis into some other living form."

"You lost me," Mabel said.

"Mason and Wendy may have been forced into animal shapes," Ford said. "According to Cipher, there is a ritual that, if undertaken soon enough, may return them to their proper shapes. Possibly. It must be performed in the light of a full moon—how full is the moon?"

"Of what?" Mabel asked.

"Almanac, almanac, I know we have one—Lorena, where's the—"

"The moon was full last night," Lorena said, coming in with a tray bearing a frosty pitcher of fresh-squeezed lemonade and glasses.

"Then we're probably still in the window," Ford said. "They must leave that hidden valley, and then the instructions for what they must do are arcane. How to get in touch with them, that's the—"

"On it," Mabel said, taking her phone back and tapping in Dipper's number.

* * *

. . . Dipper's phone chimed. He held it awkwardly—his fingers had become so stubby!—but swiped the screen to answer Mabel's call. "Sis! I didn't think we'd have any reception here—what? Yes, something real weird! How—how did you know? What? He—oh, man, this might be bad. I_ know_ I sound funny. You'd sound funny too if you—what? Sure. Uh, hi, Grunkle Ford, Wendy and me are in a bad fix—what? Ritual of Selene? Uh, no, I never—what's a moon bath? All night? Circle? I—well, no, I don't have anything to draw a circle with—wait."

Wendy, her wolfy nostrils twitching, asked, "Need to draw a magic circle or some deal?"

"Yeah," he said. "But I don't have anything—"

"Let's get to the car," she said. "Got some stuff in the trunk. I think there's a can of spray paint there—touch-up paint. We could use that."

"OK," he told her. To Ford, he said, "We think there may be something—yeah. We have to hurry, I know. By moonrise? Yeah, I think so. Uh, well, yeah, we—I know, right." He glanced at Wendy. "Pictures? Well . . . if there's time, I guess. Maybe. I'm OK with it. Yeah, send the text now, while I still have reception. Thanks. We'll be in touch. If it doesn't work . . . uh, we might not come home. At least not right away. We'll talk about it."

"Let's go," Wendy said as soon as he hung up.

"Wait, I have to get a long text. Don't want to lose the one bar I got on the phone before it comes in."

It took twenty anxious minutes, with Wendy pacing and glancing nervously up toward the sky and the sinking afternoon sun as Dipper explained.

She followed his account as best she could and then said, "So if we, like, draw this magic circle and all and stay inside it, no matter what happens, and let the moon shine on us, that might fix—"

"We have to take off our clothes," Dipper said. "The moon has to touch all of us. And Ford says it may be unpleasant."

"Well, yeah, with us like this," Wendy muttered. "Bound to be."

"But if it works, we should be in our own skins by sunrise."

"Let's hope it works. Man, so Bill Cipher's trying to save us? Bill ex machina? Are we sure he didn't get us into this fix? Be just like him."

"I'm pretty sure he can't reach you through the Mindscape," Dipper said. "It's hard now for him even to get in touch with me. I guess his kinship to Billy must be growing. They're going to fuse—well, you know. I think that was the texts coming in. Let me see . . . yeah, two long ones."

Wendy sounded as if she couldn't stand to wait longer: "Hey, Dip, can you find your way back to the car?"

"I think so," he told her.

"'Cause I got the keys in my pocket and I think I can run faster than we can get there hiking. Here's the deal: I'll run back to the car. You head that way, and once I get the can of paint, I'll—wait, how do I carry it? Never mind, I'll find a way. Anyhow, you head toward the car, and I'll come running back with the paint and find you."

"What if we miss each other?" Dipper asked.

"Dude, I can _smell_ you." She licked her lips and gulped. "Like a dog on the trail of, you know—of dinner."

"You're not going to eat me, are you?" he asked, unable to control the tremor in his voice.

She nuzzled him. "Not if I can help it. Wish us luck, Dip. And whatever you do—don't lose my ring!" She dropped to all fours and then said, "Not gonna work like this. Sorry, Dip." She stood up and shucked her jeans off. "Now the keys."

Dipper fished them out of her jeans pocket, then with an inspiration, he unlaced the shorter, cut-down boot and tied the keys around her neck, like a necklace.

"Or dog collar," Wendy growled. "Man, I hate this! OK, Dip, drag the pack if you can't carry it, but start toward the car. You know that big sandy spot we passed? Head for that. If you miss it, don't worry, I'll track you down!"

Dipper caught his breath as, clad only in shirt and underwear—with her bushy tail sticking through a slit she had cut—Wendy dropped to all fours and went streaking full-speed into the forest.

Damn!

Even as a red wolf—

She was so beautiful.


	9. Chapter 9

**Exploring the Madlands**

* * *

**(June 11, 2017)**

**9\. What Evil Lurks**

* * *

Dipper's shoulders had narrowed in the unholy transformation. He could no longer hoist the backpack into place normally, but he successfully slung it over his right shoulder by both straps and by leaning away from the weight, found he could walk well enough.

_It feels twice as heavy as before, but I guess maybe I'm only half as strong._

He called on all the woodlore he had learned from Wendy to remember the route as he passed through the tree line and entered an evergreen forest. It was a twisting route, because they'd taken advantage of switchbacks to climb the steepest places. He thought he could recognize trees from their trek up, but they looked different because he was viewing them from a changed level.

_Why'd I have to get smaller and shorter? Wendy stayed the same height!_

He trudged on, panting—he didn't seem to be able to sweat properly—and sometimes skidded, sometimes tripped, but never fell. He worked his way steadily toward the spot where he recalled the clearing, a wide sandy saucer of a valley at the foot of a rocky hill.

At least the trail he followed led mostly downhill. After half an hour of hard hiking, not made any easier by his unfamiliar legs and feet, he had to pause, leaning against a boulder to catch his breath. His phone rang again—Mabel's ringtone.

"Hi," he said. "I texted back. Wendy and I are gonna try—"

"Don't hang up!" Mabel said. Then, as if speaking to someone in the room with her, she said, "He's on the line now!"

"What's going on?" he asked.

"Grunkle Ford is tracing our signal with some of his gizmos. He's getting a fix on you. He thinks we ought to come and rescue you."

A dozen thoughts flashed through Dipper's mind, beginning with "Great!" and ending with "Oh, no!"

"Uh, Mabel, I think we better try this ourselves," he said. "We're kinda monsters now."

"What, like you're gonna _attack_ us?" Mabel asked.

"No, no, but—I don't like the way I look. And I don't think Wendy wants to be seen as a werewolf, either."

Sounding curious, Mabel asked, "Is she, like, all-fours—"

"She's upright," Dipper said. "Bipedal, you know. But all hairy and she grew a—um, a—well, a tail."

"Ooh! Does she look scary?"

"Not to me," Dipper said honestly. "And I've got these floppy ears and hoofs and, um, a tail, too."

"You're a fawn! Or an f-a-U-n! That's adorable!"

"Not quite. Just got my two legs, and no antlers or anything. Anyway, I've gotta go. There's an open clearing about half a mile downhill from where I am, and Wendy and I are gonna meet there to try the incantations and all. We have to get ready before nightfall."

"What? You two split up? Dipper! Never split the party!"

"If we didn't, we were gonna run out of time!" Dipper said. "I really have to go. I'll take a couple of pictures of us for Grunkle Ford if Wendy will let me, but now I have to go."

He hung up, hefted the pack again, and stumbled down a steep hillside.

* * *

_Lynx rufus pallescens_ is the scientific name for the Pale Bobcat. The bobcat is one of two species of_ Felidae _native to Oregon. The other is the cougar. Fortunately for Wendy and Dipper, no cougars were ranging that far up the hills on that particular day in June.

Bobcats, well, that's another story. The Pallid Lynx or Pale Bobcat (different names, same animal) does not grow as large as the cougar, or even its cousin, the Canada Lynx. The animal that had just picked up Dipper's scent weighed out at just twenty-two pounds. A good-sized house cat could run twelve pounds and more, so—not that great a threat, right?

Um, not so much.

This bobcat was not a mutation—just a bobcat whose ancestors had wandered into the Valley and who had found good hunting in remote spots. Bobcats normally subsisted on such prey as field mice, opossums (despite Dipper's contention that a strange sound in the night is never a possum, sometimes even in Gravity Falls it is), birds a little too slow on the take-off, rabbits, squirrels, the usual menu.

However, for their weight, bobcats are ferocious hunters and absolutely fearless. True, unless cornered or desperate, an average bobcat would never attack even a medium-sized dog (a coyote would). Yet a bobcat's bringing down a juvenile deer is not an extraordinary occurrence. And in bobcat country, farmers know to protect half-grown pigs, horse foals, and calves. Hunger is a great encourager, in the sense of giving a bobcat courage to try for exceptionally large prey.

These predators are, as a rule, nocturnal, but, hey, rules are made to be mocked.

The one that had scented Dipper had gone two nights without a kill and was hungry. It was a solitary male, like most cats a bundle of nerves and fury compactly stowed in a remarkably flexible skeletal system and muscles that could be wound as taught as the springs in a grandfather clock, all of it wrapped in speckled light yellowy-brown fur.

The animal, one should note again, was not a mutant. It had never ventured inside the passage to the mysterious high valley and, while in its right mind, never would. Something in the air up there warned most animals off. The unfortunate ones that ventured in never came out again, which, considering what the valley tended to do to living things, was a blessing for the outer world.

The bobcat was rather far away when the wind brought the tantalizing aroma of potential food. Mouth open—many cats test for scents that way, both with nose and tongue—the creature sniffed the air.

What he smelled was strange—not a predator, that was clear, no ammoniac undertone. It was, perhaps, a hoofed creature, something like a deer (delicious and so much meat when a small one could be slain) or maybe even a mountain goat (much harder to chase down and the meat was tougher).

Something edible, anyway, lured the bobcat down the hillside, up another, constantly testing the air for the scent. The smell grew stronger, and finally the bobcat emerged from the tree line and hit a ground trail, still warm and vibrant in the nostrils. Oh, yes, whatever the animal was, it smelled edible and the scent suggested it was small enough to warrant an attack.

Cats do not normally drool.

But this one licked its lips, then went forward in a stealthy semi-crouch, reading the tale of Dipper's passing from the scents strong on the earth—and knowing that he couldn't be too far away now.

* * *

Wendy reached the Dart and had trouble with the key—like Dipper, she was not used to the new configuration of her hands, and she had great difficulty trying to grasp the key between fingers and reduced thumb. However, she didn't give up and finally managed to turn the key in the trunk lock. The lid sprang open, and she practically climbed into the trunk. She remembered the forest-green paint was here somewhere, she could even smell it—

When she was more her normal self, Wendy rather liked the smells of paint, oil, and gasoline. She had discovered an aptitude for mechanical work and the Dart was not only her ride, it was her hobby and her pride and joy. She'd rebuilt the engine, installed new parts, taken care of incipient rust, rigged it up with anti-theft equipment, even reupholstered the seats and relined the roof. The scents of such things as paint were perfume to her nose.

Not now. Now the smell of the spray paint seemed so overpowering and unnatural that it gagged her. She rousted the can out from its hiding place, behind the emergency kit of road flares, tow rope, gloves, emergency blanket, jumper cables, tire gauge, screwdriver and wrench kit, flashlight, even a compact first-aid box. She tried to remember when she'd last used the paint—she hadn't used much, touching up a place where she'd buffed out a ding on a rear door. Was it dried out?

She took it in both hands—both paws, she thought irritably—and shook it. The marble rattled freely. Great, she was in business.

As for carrying it, she tucked it down inside her shirt and inside her bra. It was loose now anyway—her breasts were smaller and flatter, even though more abundant—and the strap would hold it against her breastbone.

She didn't bother closing the trunk lid, but leaped to earth, made sure the paint was still secure, and then began to backtrack. Dipper should arrive at the clearing a little before her. If she'd thought, she would have somehow brought her phone, but it was in the pocket of her jeans—

_Hope Dipper put the jeans in the pack! I didn't tell him to!_

She wound her way up a steep hillside on all fours and then froze, her ears going back, the mane on her neck bristling.

She'd just caught the faintest scent of a predator—too distant to make sure what direction the smell came from, but not distant enough.

The part of her that had become wolf screamed into her human brain_: Cat! Cat! CAT!_

She broke into a run.

* * *

Dipper reached the clearing. The sun rode low, the sandy spot in complete shade. The sunlight had climbed halfway up the skirts of the pine trees bordering the clearing.

What had happened here to leave such a bare spot? Lightning strike, burn scar? Or was this—yeah, he thought it was, as he surveyed the lay of the land: the dried-up bed of a lake. Scratch that. A small woodland pond.

In wet weather, a stream flowed down the hill here, not a big one, and the depression at the hill's shoulder—the clearing—filled up to be a temporary round pond. The sand was the bottom of the pond except in dry weather, and currently the weather was dry.

Even so, he could still smell dampness in the layers of sand just under the surface. He remembered excursions to the beach with Mabel. They'd built sand castles and Mabel had created bas-relief sand sculptures. And had signed her work by writing in the sand.

Damp sand could be drawn on.

_Might as well save some time._

He found a stick and, looking at the diagram that Ford had texted him, etched out a circle on the ground, about ten feet in diameter. Then he drew another outside that—a little irregular, but it ought to do.

Now the symbols. He could judge directions by the sun—it was sinking lower in the west, so if west was on his left hand, north was straight ahead. He had to orient the symbols between the inner and outer circles by the compass.

Due North: A circle, representing the full. Halfway between East and South:: a crescent open to the right, the waning moon. Then halfway between South and West, a crescent open to the left, a young moon, a waxing crescent.

And in between those: the alchemical symbols for earth, air, fire, water, the four elements that the ancients believed could be combined and recombined to effect change, transformation.

Still filling in gaps: the Yin/Yang circle, the spiral symbol of mutability, the male and female signs, Mars and Venus. And finally Paracelsus' mystic symbol for transmutation, which looked disconcertingly like Bill Cipher: A triangle enclosing a square enclosing a circle.

_Bill, if any of you is still in me, we could use some help!_

Dipper finished his art work and stood surveying the etched circle in the sand. Now when Wendy got there with the paint, all he'd have to do would be to trace over the scratches, and then they'd wait for the moon to shine on them, recite the incantation asking for restoration of their true shapes, and hope for the best.

Wendy. Where was she?

Dipper listened but heard only birdsong and woodpecker drums. He started to call her, but then remembered she had left her phone. He had stuffed it and her ripped jeans into the pack.

Well, she had to go a lot farther than he'd had to travel. She should be back soon. Any minute.

Something—even he couldn't say what, the snap of a twig, the sudden cessation of bird twitters up the hillside, maybe even a vagrant breeze bringing an alarming odor—shocked him. He spun, looking up the hill, his heart beating hard, his instincts telling him to flee the danger.

_Something was coming._

_Something bad._

_Something hungry._

* * *

Wendy snarled her flannel shirt in a hawthorn tangle—damn it, she knew better, those thorns were wickedly sharp and curved, but she'd thought she could creep under them—and wound up in frustration ripping herself free of the garment, then bypassing the hedgy growth. The can of paint threatened to jounce loose, so she stood on her—hell, admit it, girl—hind feet and grasped it against her chest as she toiled up the last steep slope.

"Dipper!"

"Wendy!"

His voice came faint and she couldn't see him yet, but he had reached the clearing. Wendy pushed through more undergrowth and then came out. She saw him holding a stick—too short to be a weapon, though—

"Glad we kept a change of clo—"

She broke off. A movement uphill had caught her eye.

"Look out!"

Dropping the spray can, Wendy lunged forward.

Just as Dipper turned to meet the headlong charge and leap of a bobcat.


	10. Chapter 10

**Exploring the Madlands**

* * *

**(June 11, 2017)**

**10: Life And/or Death**

* * *

For some reason, the valley in which Gravity Falls and the rest of Roadkill County lies—well, it has a name, it's called Gravity Falls Valley (for the same reason that the falls are called Gravity Falls Falls, that is, both were named by Quentin Trembly)—for some reason, the valley does not show up well, if at all, on satellite imagery. You can look where it's supposed to be, and there's usually only a foggy greenish blur. If on the clearer days you zoom in, the picture loses resolution and dissolves into pixels way before it should.

I mean, just outside the surrounding mountains and sheer bluffs, you can zoom in on the county road and see Admiral Skipper's home and count his collection of military memorabilia. Even see clearly the white star on the hatch cover of the Stuart Tank that Wendy had once driven. If an animal had been struck by a car, you could almost always identify the species. But inside the valley—just close-packed colorful polka dots everywhere you looked.

Years before, a frustrated Stanford, searching for nonexistent aerial photos of some interesting terrain he would have loved to explore, commented, "It's almost as if something doesn't _want_ us to see details in the valley!"

Yes. Almost.

Perhaps for that reason, there are no good recent maps of the entire Valley. However, long ago Fiddleford had unearthed an old map, created by the Breaker Brothers, a publishing company out of Seattle that, true to the brothers' name, had lasted just long enough to go broke, that on a number of overlapping maps showed the valley in 1:26,000 scale, pretty darn good since a U.S. Geological Survey Map is around 1:24,000.

The U.S. Geological Survey, by the way, has never mapped Roadkill County. On two occasions, crews went there to perform the task, but in neither did any of the men return. Finally, the guy in charge of the U.S. Geological Survey at the time, said,  
"#*(% it, nobody wants to go there anyway," and since then the area has been quietly removed from the USGS's "to-do" list.

By the way, the same Agency has no detailed maps of Area 51. It's rumored that if one asks a large library for the USGS map of Area 51, a group of men dressed in black appears from nowhere, roughs one up, denies that such an area exists, and then warns one never to look for it again. That doesn't happen with Gravity Falls—what happens if you ask for that map is the librarian smiles and says, "What, are you crazy?" and perhaps lightly smacks you upside the head.

Anyway, when he had abruptly resigned from Stanford's researches for reasons of his own, Fiddleford had left the map set behind in one of the many lockers in Stanford's underground lab. He had come over to the Shack and had remembered right away where the maps were stored, quite a feat since for a good many years in the middle of his life, Fiddleford couldn't remember the date, what things could and could not be eaten by a human, and often his own name. Funny how the little things stick with a person.

Anyway, they unrolled the right quadrant on the floor weighing down the edges with a pickled and presumably inert dragon's egg in a jar, a cast-iron implement that Stanford had picked up at a yard sale assuming it was some kind of pioneer kitchenware (it actually dated back to the Spanish Inquisition and was called by the Inquisitors the Old Reliable, since it could make anyone confess to anything)*, a .671 millimeter wrench (made specially for items on the crashed UFO, which didn't seem to use either metric or U.S. standard increments), and Tripper, who sat with ears perked at the southeastern corner.

* * *

*It may be nothing more than a legend, but it's said that upon first trying out the implement on a victim, Torquemada exclaimed, "¡Pancho! ¡Pídanos un bruto de estos bebés!" ("Hot diggity! Let's order a gross of these babies!"). That plan was forestalled because the craftsman who had designed and built the prototype had been arrested on heresy charges when he came to deliver it (a bookkeeping error) and Torquemada had used the instrument on him and then had ordered the remains burned. Keep in mind that history is written by the survivors.

* * *

Even at that scale, Stanford used a magnifying glass. "Here it is," he said. "The location of Mason's telephone the last time we were in touch."

Fiddleford, who reckoned he was too old and creaky to creep around on hands and knees, wore his special magnificationing spectacles. "But whereabouts in blue tarnation is that-there secret hidden valley?"

"It doesn't seem to show up on the map," Stanford said.

"Well, I reckon that's sensible. Wouldn't be no secret hidden valley if it was on a map."

"That's remarkably cogent," Stanley said.

"I'll try to do better. Betcha it's right there, though." Fiddleford had picked up a wooden pointer and tapped a spot on the bluffs. "Lookie what they wrote there when they made the map."

"_Dangerous ground_," Stanford read. "Well. Now we know approximately where we need to go. How do we get there? I'd say air is the best way."

"Yeah, but you know nobody in their rightful minds wouldn't pilot no flying machine that fur into the Valley," Fiddleford said. "I think that-there was a triple negative, but you get my drift. Airplane and helimacopter instruments just go as loco as a swamp rat in an eight-quarter Laundromat washin' machine when they get into Valley airspace."

"But we can use drones," Stanford said.

"Well, yeah, 'cause there you navigates by television. No fancy magnetical doodaddles to go crazy. No gyros to start a-spinnin' in directions they ain't even got spinners."

"Then we need a drone big enough to transport three people," Stanford said. "One that the person aboard could pilot by blind reckoning and by visual landmarks."

"Don't that kind of cancel out?"

"Oh, you know what I mean. Let's say dead reckoning."

"Naw, let's not use that word," Fiddleford said. "But I guess I could take and modify that little old helimacopter that the County bought and never uses. Reckon Blubs would lend it to us?"

"I reckon he better," Stanford said, standing up. "How much time will it take?"

"How long until sunset?"

Stanford checked his watch. "Three hours, about."

"Then it'll probably take me about two hours and a half. You know how we always run plumb smack up agin the deadlnes."

"Then let's go!"

All of them, two men and a dog, hustled upstairs, but the dog remained with Mabel, who had changed clothes and who paced the floor of the gift shop. She watched her uncle and the old scientist jog across the lawn and out to their cars. "I wonder what they're doing?" she said. She took out her phone and tried Dipper's number again, and then Wendy's. No answer on either line.

"I'd go looking for them," she told Teek, "Except I don't know exactly where to look! Grunkle Ford wouldn't tell me."

"I'm sure he had a reason," Teek said.

"Yeah, I think the reason's probably me," Mabel replied.

Tripper didn't talk, but he looked worried.

* * *

If you want to get an idea of how the bobcat's charge felt to Dipper, first get someone to get a twenty-five-pound bag of flour. A brawny, strong someone. And then get them to swing it in a fast circle and hurl it against your chest. No, that's not quite it. Get them to imbed eight razors in the flour bag and then throw it. Yeah, that's better.

Dipper didn't have a clear idea of what was coming at him, just that it was an animal that seemed pissed-off. He raised the stick that he had use to inscribe the circle and symbols, which caught the bobcat just at the base of its throat and deflected its leap fractionally.

Still one slashing paw raked Dipper's arm, sending a flash of hot pain jolting through his nerves, and his mutated autonomic nervous system—which in humans sends "fight or flight" impulses—screamed, "_Run, you idiot, it's going to eat us!" _By definition, his transformation had flipped the fight-or-flight switch to full-on flight.

However, part of him was still quite human, and that part made him dive for Wendy's axe, lying on the grass. He seized it just as the bobcat rolled three times, got to its feet, and leaped again.

And just as Dipper drew back, wolf-lady Wendy, snarling like a real wolf, flashed over the circle in a powerful leap of her own and snapped at the bobcat.

It was a close thing—her jaws clicked an inch from the bobcat's throat, its forefeet came within a few fractions of an inch of eviscerating her—and then both landed.

The bobcat, startled, crouched. Wendy got her footing and, on all fours, charged. The bobcat reared on its hind legs—cats do that sometimes when confronted by angry dogs, and occasionally it works—

And Dipper swung the axe as hard as he could, blunt side leading.

He connected, the bobcat rolled over and over, and Wendy, at the end of her leap, whirled and grabbed it by the scruff of the neck.

She didn't shake it.

After a moment she dropped the body and came over to Dipper, still on all fours. "Are you OK?"

"Scratched," he said.

In fact, blood was dripping from his right forearm. Well, forelimb at the moment.

"Take off the shirt, let me see."

"The bobcat might come to—"

"Dip, it'll never come to again. Trust me on this."

Dipper stopped in the act of squirming out of his bloody shirt. "I . . . killed it?"

"Here," Wendy said, standing and tugging at his shirt. "Let me see how bad it hurt you."

He stood, still as a mannequin, while Wendy peeled away the shirt. "Dude, you may need stitches."

The pain started to throb. "I wanted to knock it out," he mumbled.

"It was the bobcat or you. You didn't have much choice. Good shot, by the way."

She ripped his shirt—awkwardly, and she still was complaining about her shortage in the thumbs department—and then said, "Let me bandage that. You put the first-aid kit in the pack?"

"Yeah, I think," he said. "Wendy, I never deliberately killed an ordinary animal before."

"Don't let it haunt your conscience." Wendy ransacked the pack and came up with the plastic first-aid kit. "Open this, find antibiotic and a four-inch gauze pad."

He did as she asked, tore the packet and pulled the pad out, unscrewed the lid of the antibiotic tube. Wendy bent over his arm—only two claws had hooked him, leaving two close-spaced gashes. She bent over them, her nose twitching. And she licked his arm.

"Wendy!" Dipper yelped.

"Can't help it," she moaned. "Anyway, it's supposed to help sterilize a wound. Smear some antibiotic on that pad and then put it over the wounds."

He did, and she wound the strips she'd torn from the shirt round and round his forearm and knotted them. "Wish I hadn't done that," she said, licking her lips. "You don't know how tempting blood smells to me right now. Where's the paint?"

She had dropped it downslope of the circle, and it lay on the grass. Dipper retrieved it.

"OK," she said. "You spray-paint the circle and symbols and all. I gotta drag this body off."

"You—are you going to eat it?" Dipper asked fearfully.

"No. Bury it. We don't want it attracting bears or anything more dangerous. Concentrate on the painting, Dip. This'll take me a few minutes."

She grasped the limp bobcat by the scruff of its neck and tugged it downhill. Then, like a dog, she sniffed around, found what was evidently a good spot, and dug with her forepaws—a pretty deep hole—and dumped the body in and covered it over. By the time she came back up the hill, Dipper had put the finishing touches on the magic circle.

"How long until sunset?" she asked.

"An hour or two," he said. "Hard to tell here, with the sun behind the cliffs."

"Guess we better get ready. Naked, huh?"

"That's what Grunkle Ford said. I wonder if I should take the bandage off."

"Leave it until dark," she said. "Make sure the bleeding's stopped. Here goes. I hope I don't look too horrible."

She stripped the bra and underwear off. She turned away from Dipper, her arms crossed over the top pair of breasts—furry, but they showed—and her tail curled around over her loins. "I'm a monster," she said.

"You're still beautiful to me," he told her.

He pulled everything off, too, and she giggled when she saw him. "Sorry, Dip," she said. "You're nearly as short as you were when I first met you, and seeing you all covered with that pelt—I won't say you're handsome, but you look tasty!"

"Pictures or no?" he asked, holding his phone.

"Did you promise Dr. P?"

"Kind of."

"I guess it's for science. But take it from the side and let me know if anything shows that shouldn't."

He took one photo of her, she one of him—though he held his trucker's hat over a strategic area—and then they sat down in the center of the circle, back to back. Because of the fur, they didn't have skin-to-skin contact and couldn't use their odd form of telepathy, so they talked in low voices.

Wendy asked, "What happens if this doesn't work?"

"I don't know," he said. "I guess we try somehow to get to Grunkle Ford. Maybe there's another way. He figured out a method to keep Gideon from being a permanent werewolf."

"And if there's no way? I think we'll have to break up, Dipper."

"Don't say that. I don't mind what shape we're in if we can be together."

"That's sweet, but every time I smell you or see you, I can't help thinking 'prey.' Sooner or later I'd hurt you."

"I don't think so," he said.

She sighed. After a long time, she said, "I'm getting real antsy. What else do we have to do?"

"There's an incantation, not a long one. One of us has to say it when we first see the moon. Then, supposedly, we'll get groggy and fall asleep."

"Wish the moon would rise," she said.

Dipper said, "Listen. Is that an animal somewhere?"

"Hope the bobcat didn't have a mate." She listened.

"Hear it?"

"Yeah, a good ways off. Sounds a little like the giant spider."

Dipper's bones seemed to have turned to ice. "Do you think something followed us out of the hidden valley?"

Wendy was sniffing the air. "Wind's wrong. God, Dipper, I hope not," she said.

Far up the slope, on the loose rock just below the fissure leading into the valley, though, something with many legs scrabbled, its weird head questing back and forth. Something—the spirit of the valley, whatever—had told it, "Go and find them and bring them back and if you can't, kill them and die with them."

The creature obeyed. Perhaps a hundred years earlier, it would have refused. It couldn't now, though.

Because what was left was very nearly a hundred per cent inhuman.


	11. Chapter 11

**Exploring the Madlands**

* * *

**(June 11-12, 2017)**

**11: "Instinct is a great matter." -Shakespeare**_**, 1 Henry IV**_**, 2:4.**

* * *

Dipper could sense how tense Wendy was, how she practically quivered as they waited out the dusk. "It'll be OK," he said. They still sat back to back, fur to fur, and did not have their telepathy to help them, but still—he knew her nerves were strung way too tight, so much unlike her normal laid-back self that she was almost a different girl.

"It's not that," she muttered. "I just feel so bad for what I did."

"It's my fault. I killed the bobcat."

"Not that, Dipper. Tasting your blood! I mean—yuck! But I couldn't help myself!"

"It wasn't such a big deal. It's stopped bleeding now, I'm pretty sure. And it doesn't hurt all that much. Tripper—"

"Go ahead, say it. He does the same thing, right?"

"Well, yeah. Mabel still gets plenty of skinned knees, and he'll lick—but he's trying to help. I kind of understand why you did that. It doesn't matter to me."

"That's not all. I got us into this mess, thinking we'd explore a place you'd never heard of."

"You didn't know about it," he pointed out. "I'd never hold that against you."

"Yeah, but also I was the one who went up that dumb slippery hill and skidded into the crater. And then you went in for my ring—"

"I'd have dived for it even if we'd known what it would do," Dipper said.

For a few minutes Wendy was silent. Then she said softly, "Dipper, whatever happens tonight—whether we change back or not—you gotta have your Grunkle Ford come and dig up that bobcat. Have it tested."

"For what?"

"Rabies!" She drew in a deep, long, tremulous breath. "I mean—I don't think it's likely. If I remember right from my wildlife biology class, in the last five years, I think no dogs, one cat, two foxes, and two coyotes tested positive for rabies in the whole state. They get it mostly from eating diseased bats. About one out of twelve bats in Oregon is a carrier. But when they get it, it kills them fast. Carnivores that eat the dead bats can get it—but bobcats aren't scavengers. No bobcats on record as being rabid. But just to be safe—"

"It didn't bite me," Dipper pointed out. "These scratches came from its claws, not its teeth."

"Gashes, not scratches," Wendy corrected. "Ask Dr. P. to check it out anyway. And whatever, have the doc at the clinic treat those wounds, even if he doesn't have to give you stitches. Promise me."

"I promise," he said. After a moment, he added, "Either him or the vet, whichever is appropriate."

She didn't respond to his feeble effort at joking. "You still got my ring?"

"It's still in the zip-up pocket of my pants. I checked when we, you know, got undressed."

"Bring it into the circle with us?"

"Sure," he said. He got up and fetched the pants. She didn't look around at him, out of consideration for his feelings, he figured. "I'm gonna leave the ring in this pocket, though. Harder to lose that way."

"Thanks, Dip. Whatever happens tonight, man, remember—I love you."

"I love you, too, Magic Girl," he said.

"Bill's not around in your head tonight, huh?"

"What?" he asked.

"You haven't called me 'Red,'" she whispered.

"You hate that."

"Right now I'm so scared and lonely, I'd love to hear it," she admitted. She was panting. "Just found out something, dude. Make a note of it. Wolves, no matter how sad and scared they feel—they can't cry."

* * *

In the dimness of dusk, a darker shadow flowed down the hillside. Anyone glimpsing it would be hard pressed to say what it could be—it resembled a huge snake, or part of one—it slithered, it made its way in sinuous curves, but it wasn't all that long, maybe ten feet, but broad enough to be an anaconda.

And if one listened, it did not move on its belly, but on dozens of short scrabbling legs. It glided with its front segments reared slightly, its vaguely humanoid swiveling head questing left and right, perhaps trying to follow a scent or to catch sight of something or someone.

It did not move fast, but implacably. The animals and birds—the normal ones, the field mice, the quail, the twittering, darting swifts that came out with the sunset—avoided the flowing shadow, sensing something wrong about it, something twisted, abnormal, different in a deadly way.

However, the creature was not interested in feeding. Only in following the urges the valley itself gave it—to find the two escapees and eliminate them. Secrets must be kept.

Long and weary years before, the creature had been human, a hunter who had discovered the low tunnel and ventured into the hidden valley in search of game.

He found none. Rather, in the end, something found_ him_.

Over decades, his body changed, devolving, transforming still recognizably bipedal, from something with two legs and freedom to run to this lowly, creeping form, more insect than animal. His mind had broken long ago, but a faint memory still lingered, a memory of being human and going on two legs.

It did not evoke sorrow so much as hatred of those who still had some semblance of humanity left to them.

Instinct drove it—the instinct to bite with its horrible venomous pincers, to inflict a fiery death that would pulse through the blood until the blood stilled forever.

Instinct told it to come swiftly, in the dark.

To move stealthily, especially in the final approach.

To die itself if need be, but to accomplish its task before dying.

Beware instinct.

As William Shakespeare had his character Falstaff proclaim, instinct is a great matter.

In times of crisis, it supersedes reason and thought itself.

It's in the driver's seat.

When it calls, one must answer. When it commands, one must obey.

Fear the dark? Fear the unknown? Fear the creeping monster?

No.

First and above all, fear blind instinct.

* * *

A sliver of silver rose above the trees in the east—the still-fat moon, very nearly full, maybe just full enough.

Dipper stood and recited the strange incantation, in a language that no one living could read or write. Who could understand it? Well, perhaps the ghost of Paracelsus, or Queen Elizabeth I's private wizard. John Dee, or maybe, at a pinch, Roger Bacon and his powerful wizard friend Prospero—or, going back to the wellspring, Simon Magus of antiquity.

He held the words in his memory, the sounds of them, though the meanings no one could tell him: "_K'ai leune, megistras nictus, abrax ch' kharm t' enturn'ik; kuradha nus, t' nefen'avath; attus luxim, attus fint'acar, attus pachis_."

He stood and could feel the moonlight—a physical force on his body. "I think it's starting," he said.

"Dipper—"

"Can you feel it?"

Wendy snarled. She strained out an anguished word: "Run!"

He turned. She had gone into a feral crouch. With a growl, she pounced, threw him down on his back, pinned him, her jaws slavering inches from his face. "Can't—help—it—"

_She's going to rip my throat out!_

Strangely, he felt no panic—just the flat thought. "I didn't want to do this," he said.

Straining, fighting her own impulses, Wendy groaned, "If I can let you up, run!"

He put his arms around her. "Listen," he said.

She froze, and he felt the quivering tension in her nearly tearing her apart. But then her flattened canine ears perked forward as he sang, as best he could, crushed there by her weight—

". . . so go up and greet your mammy, mammy . . . ."

She began to shake.

He continued, and when he wrapped up with "Don't, don't, don't you forget about the ba-a-aby!"

And the red wolf collapsed atop the small white sheep, laughing. "Oh, man, Dip!"

"We OK?" he asked, caressing her. His hands moved down her back. "Hey—your tail's smaller."

"It is?" She pushed up from him. "Oh, yeah, I'm startin' to feel something."

"Lie down on your stomach—not on mine! And let me lie next to you. If the moonlight's starting to work, we're home free."

They lay stretched out, face-down. Then Wendy grunted. "Oh, man, this is beginning to hurt me. I can f-feel my bones—ugh! Changing!"

"Me too," Dipper said through clenched teeth. "Grunkle Ford didn't—ahh—say it would hurt this much—my fingers are growing."

"Mine, too. Claws are all gone. I think—oh, God, my legs! I think I got less—ahh!—fur now—look at me—"

"Your face is going back to normal—ahh, dang!"

"Yours too. I—wish—you—could keep the—lamb's ears! They're cu—cute—" Wendy spasmed and howled. Bones reshaping were indeed agonizing. And they would still have to turn over and bask their front sides in the moonlight. "That was a bad one. Hey, Dip—kiss me, man."

Their mouths were the right shape again. He turned partway on his side, she turned partway on hers, and their lips met. And they spread out the pain, shared it, told each other to bear with it, and that made it easier.

"You—gonna miss having—ugh!—a girl with six b-boobs, Dipper?" she asked.

"I'll settle for the normal—normal two," he grunted, shuddering as his feet became more human.

"How's my tail?" Wendy asked. "I can't feel it anymore."

He ran his palm down her spine. "Just a little brush now," he said. "It's shrinking away."

"God, how long does this go on?"

He glanced up in the sky and blinked, astonished. "It's already been hours. Moon's almost at the zenith."

"Time—oh, God!—flies when you're having pain!" she said.

"Better turn on our backs," Dipper said.

They did, and found they could hold hands—and, mercy of mercies, their hands were so nearly human that their telepathy worked again.

_This isn't so bad, _Wendy told him. _Dipper, I'm so sorry—I couldn't help pinning you down. And I might have—hurt you if you hadn't—_

—_Humiliated myself by singing the Lamby Lamby song? It's OK. I'm mature enough to accept my dorkhood. I just thought for sure that if I could make you laugh—_

_Yeah, I got it. Wolves can't cry. But they can't laugh, either. You did it, Dip. You turned off the instinct and turned on the human part of me that will love you forever._

—_You're looking good in the moonlight, Wen. Hardly any fur at all. We're past the hard part now. Hey, roll on your side._

They both did, facing each other.

_Mm, you're my big guy again. Within an inch of being as tall as me._

—_I can see your freckles now. We've it beat._

And they might have, but for the shadowy form that crested a rise a few yards away from them, crouched, and clashed its evil pincers in anticipation.

* * *

To be continued


	12. Chapter 12

**Exploring the Madlands**

* * *

**(June 11-12, 2017)**

**12: Naked against Mine Enemy**

* * *

"What is that thing?" Wendy yelped. Her axe lay on the ground just outside the circle. She reached and grabbed it, wincing as a crackle of energy broke out around her hand. "Ow! Feels like I sprained my wrist!"

"Don't get outside the circle!" Dipper warned. "We have to stay inside until the moon sets!"

But she had held onto the axe.

The creature came rattling toward them, an armored segmented horror a foot wide and ten feet long, but only a few inches thick. The moonlight was not strong enough to fully reveal it, but what Dipper could see was bad enough.

"It must have followed us out of the hidden valley," he said. "It doesn't look like any normal animal. Or even any Gravity Falls animal!"

It crept, undulating.

"I think it's trying to scare us," Wendy said.

"It's pretty good at it."

"Here, dude, I can't trust my right wrist. You take the axe."

"Wendy, I don't think I could—"

"Axe works on a simple principle, Dip. Slash it or smash it. Just don't miss!"

He took the axe and felt her hand on his shoulder. Through it flowed everything she knew about defense with an axe. However, knowing the theory was one thing—having the muscle memory to use the axe to best advantage was something else, and something their telepathy could not fully send him.

The creature hissed as it came closer. Dipper drew the axe back. "Stay behind me," he said, "but don't step outside the circle!"

"No worries about that!"

The creature clearly sensed or saw them—they could make out the head, but nothing they could with certainty call eyes. It crept in a sine-wave fashion like a snake, but humped and flattened as it did, something like an inchworm. Dipper tensed as it reached the edge of the circle and started across—

Zap! A painful flash of purple-white light momentarily blinded Dipper. He heard the creature scream as if in serious pain, but he couldn't see. "Where is it, where is it?"

"Ahead and off to the right. The explosion flipped it backward! What did you do?"

"Nothing," he said. "Must be the protective symbols. Anything destructive can't pass the circle's border before—" He broke off. Her hand still lay on his bare shoulder.

—_Don't say anything out loud, Wendy. That thing might have started out as a human_.

_Gotcha. You're still having trouble seeing. Borrow my eyes. See it now?_

Over Dipper's own dimmed vision Wendy superimposed hers, from a slightly different perspective, behind his right shoulder and not quite level with his own eyeline, but close enough, as he had heard Stan say more than once, for Army work.

The monstrous form had managed to flop back onto its belly. The head reared up, hooded, a little like a cobra's, but flattened. He caught the gleam of moonlight on the wide, pincer-framed mouth, saw the bone-white daggers of the pincers open and close, four in all, two at each corner of the mouth, the top ones somewhat smaller than the lower ones.

They clashed audibly, and they dripped with some kind of venom, dark green in the moonlight, stringy and glistening.

The left-side pincers jerked, as if injured. Maybe that was the part of the creature that had edged over the fatal circumference of the magic circle. He heard the monster groan as if in serious pain.

But the worst part was the ruins of the human face—bloated, as though swollen by rot, sagging, like a bust made in wax and left out in the sun—glaring eyes from which the lids had shriveled and flowed away so they could no longer close, a pair of quivering slits for a nose, and the ragged mouth, much transformed but with a snaggle of yellow human teeth visible when it writhed.

The creature seemed feel intense pain, shaking hits head, licking the wounded corner of the mouth with a black, distended tongue.

Dipper could see now that it ran on tiny legs like a centipede's—well, if a centipede were magically enlarged to be ten feet long—but that the first and last sets were vaguely human, the rear pair like bony human legs but ending in claws, and each forelimb tipped with claspers like a sharp-nailed thumb, together with four fingers fused together into a chitinous crescent. They opened and closed convulsively, clacking.

"Go away!" Wendy yelled. "Go back to where you came from! We're not hurting you!"

The creature thrashed madly, as if enraged by the sound of a human voice. It started to creep around them. Dipper, axe in hand, paced he periphery of the circle, Wendy beside him, her hand pressed on his back. He thought to her:

—_You keep an eye on the circle border. Don't let me accidentally step across it_.

_Got you covered, Dip. Uh—you sure you could stand to kill it if you had to?_

—_It's not like the bobcat. This thing should know better._

Wendy shouted again: "Go back! We'll kill you if we have to! Last warning!"

The monster replied—by rearing, like a cobra about to strike. Dipper took a stance and raised the axe, determined to chop through the misshapen head if he had to.

But . . . the thing dropped back to earth, then scuttled away. "Is it gone?" Wendy asked.

"Not sure," he said. "It went downhill, not back toward the cliffs. I think it may be up to something. I can still hear it rustling over there under the trees. Can you see it?"

"No. How late is it? The moon's awful low."

"No idea. I feel like I'm pretty much changed back, though."

"Yeah, your hair's still white and curly, but it's not wool any longer. How about me?"

He glanced sideways. "Your face looks normal. I think your ear's a little pointed. Wait a second." He swept his hand down her spine, to her coccyx, and then . . . a little lower. "Your tail's gone!"

"Better squeeze to make sure," she whispered as he felt the muscles of her buttock flex.

"Uh, there'll be a better time," he said.

She leaned over and nipped his ear between her teeth. "I may eat you up yet," she said. Then she dropped the teasing and asked, "Where is the damn thing now?"

"Sounds like it's off in the underbrush—wait, is that it?"

"Looks different."

Both of them strained to make out the shadow. Dipper said, "What's it done? Morphed some more?"

"No—it's dragging something."

When the creature emerged into the moonlight, Dipper saw that it was tugging at a tree limb—it must have been deadfall wood, lacking leaves, and it was as least as long as the monster itself. They could hear the scraping as it dragged along the ground.

"What the heck's it doing?" Dipper asked.

_Dude, I think it's gonna try to build a bridge over the circle's edge!_

—_Or try to use the limb to scrape through the markings._

_Hold it off—the moon will set in just a few minutes!_

—_But then the protection will end, too!_

_It doesn't know that—and maybe it can't stand sunlight._

—_We can't bet on that—the other mutants didn't have any trouble with daylight._

_Can you get to your backpack?_

—_Too far away. How's your wrist now?_

_Still hurts, but I can take the axe if I have to._

—_Right now, just watch it. If it tries to scrape out the markings, I'll fend it off as much as I can. What is it with time? It seems like it's passing way too fast._

_Maybe the magic spell or whatever. Look out, it's coming._

The human centipede had gnawed and thrashed most of the side limbs off the branch. Now its forelimbs grasped what was left and it approached slowly. It extended the branch—

"It's testing whether the circle will shock it—using the tree branch as insulation," Dipper said. Using the axe, he levered the tip of the branch away as it crossed the periphery of the circle.

The creature hissed brokenly—or was it laughing at them? It drew back a little way and then rushed forward.

_It's gonna try to push us out!_

—_Hang on!_

Dipper swiveled, and the branch, like a jousting knight's lance, passed between him and Wendy. He chopped down, struck it a glancing blow, and the monster pulled it back—but simultaneously tried to scratch it through the spray-paint markings.

"No you don't!" Wendy grabbed the limb with her good hand and as the creature tried to haul it back, she grunted and shoved, sending the monster tumbling.

"Good one," Dipper said.

"Thanks. You didn't do too shabby yourself!"

"You know, it's kind of weird, but watching you move naked in the moonlight makes me—"

"Let's talk about that later, dude! I think Crawly's tryin' it again!"

Dipper gave one glance over his shoulder. A thin sliver of the moon's orb—just the tiniest bit—shone above the trees. He held the axe in his left hand and put his right on Wendy's arm and shot her a quick plan.

_You sure, dude?_

—_No, but the moon's nearly gone. Best I can think of. Ready?_

_Hope so! Love you, man!_

_Back at you! Here it comes!_

Probably because Dipper was the one holding the axe, the monster seemed to aim for him. He stood offering it a target—but then he swiveled like a _torero_, and the point missed him. He and Wendy seized the branch at the same instant, she grunting as her injured hand closed on it, he dropping the axe so he, too, could use both hands.

The creature tried to jerk them out of the circle, but they had their legs braced and resisted. Then, as Dipper had anticipated and had warned Wendy, it tried the same trick Wendy had used on it, reversing to thrust at them again.

"Now!" Wendy yelled.

Hand over hand, like old-time sailors hoisting a kedge anchor, they hauled—and caught off-guard, the monstrous centipede lurched forward.

"Don't step out of the circle!" Dipper yelled. He gave one more heave, closing his eyes-

Heard the sizzle and sensed the heat-flash as the monster was dragged across the circle's edge—

Let go of the tree and grabbed the axe again—

Felt Wendy's palm on his chest—

_It's OK, man, the moon's gone! Dawn's in the east!_

And the centipede creature, its forward length a blunted, burned stub smelling of oily smoke, writhed on the ground.

Dawnlight washed into the valley, turning the tops of the tallest pines into glowing red beacons. Dipper, his chest heaving, said, "Watch me. I'm stepping out of the circle. If something happens—you stay safe."

But nothing untoward happened. He didn't grow a tail and ears and hooves. He didn't feel a compulsion to march, march, march around the daisies and graze. "It's OK," he said.

"Your hair's back to normal, too, dude. My turn." Wendy stepped out of the circle, and grinning, held out his pants, which she had retrieved.

But when he reached for them, she held them way over her head. "Gotta earn them," she said. "Give your girlfriend a kiss."

He gave her two or three, took the engagement ring from the zippered pocket and, still nude, knelt before his equally nude girlfriend and put the ring on her finger again—and then they gathered up their stuff, Wendy digging her jeans and a shirt from the backpack. "You didn't save any underwear?" she asked.

"Sorry, wasn't thinking," he said.

"Well, we go commando this once. Here's your spare tee shirt, Dip. Least there's socks. Let's put on our shoes and get out of here and—"

They froze as they heard a low, rasping voice: "He-l-l-p m-e-e."

"I thought it was dead!" Dipper said. Still barefoot, but with pants and shirts on, they carefully approached the circle. The light on the forest floor still was indirect, but Dipper saw that all the lines, all the symbols, had become blackened and blurred. The counter-spell to involuntary transformation channeled a lot of energy, and what was left over evidently obliterated the arcane circles and sigils.

The creature was still a giant centipede. From approximately its chest up, it too looked blackened and burned. The rear two-thirds still heaved and twitched.

The forelimbs—the arms—had been burned to stumps. The face was a mask of charcoal, the eyes burned out and blind, just hollow sockets. But the monstrous mouth moved, and the distorted voice, part human, part insect-buzz, pleaded again: "H-hel-lp me. Please."

"Dude, you tried to kill us!" Wendy said.

Dipper overrode her: "How can we help you?"

"Kill me. Sorry. Forced to hunt you down. Pain. Kill me. Please. End it. Please!"

Dipper raised the axe.

He lowered the axe. "I can't," he whispered to Wendy.

"Give it to me," Wendy said.

He looked at her, his eyes sick. "No. I think—I think I have to do it."

"Dipper, if it's gonna haunt you—"

He took a deep, long breath. "This is on me," he said, his voice tight. "I have to own it."

He raised the axe again. He didn't say, but thought, _May God have mercy on your soul._

Vaguely, he heard something—airplane, helicopter, something—in the distance.

For one instant time stood absolutely still.

And then—with the axe, he gave the hopelessly injured creature the only help he could.


	13. Chapter 13

**Exploring the Madlands**

* * *

**(June 12, 2017)**

**13: Just after the Nick of Time**

* * *

**From the Journals of Dipper Pines: **_Monday, June 12—I probably should have guessed that Fiddleford and Grunkle Ford would be in the helicopter. I didn't, though, so when it emerged over the treetops, about a quarter of a mile to the east of us, I saw it silvered in the sun and wondered who in the world would dare to fly over the Valley, where magnetic anomalies make navigational instruments go nuts._

"_Dip," Wendy said, "I bet they're lookin' for us!"_

_But they weren't going to find us, not way over there. Wendy had a solution, though. She grabbed the improvised lance that the centipede-thing had tried to shove us out of the circle with and started chopping. "You run into the pines over there," she said. "Find a dead limb with a lot of needles still on it."_

_I did, and by the time I got back, she had enough wood to tent up and make a small campfire from. I gave her the dry, dead pine bough and she stripped off the needles, used them and the pine twigs as kindling, and in a couple of seconds had a fire burning. "There. Now what we need is more pine needles, handfuls of them—OK if they're damp, 'cause what we're shooting for—"_

"_Is smoke," I said. It took me about five minutes to bring back a load of fragrant, though damp, pine needles, with a few cones thrown in for good measure. Wendy heaped them over the fire, now crackling away, and soon a column of white smoke poured up into the air._

_The helicopter was long since out of sight, though we could hear it thrumming away over near the cliffs. "I hope it doesn't set down in that secret valley," I said. "I wouldn't want to go in there to rescue anybody."_

"_If they're halfway alert, they'll see this before long," Wendy said, throwing more smoke-fuel onto the fire._

_Sure enough, in about a minute the helicopter sounded like it was returning, and a few seconds later it passed over so low that the rotor wash sent the smoke rolling over us, and both Wendy and I had a tough time seeing as tears rolled from our eyes and we coughed. "Dude," she said, "Dump sand over the fire. Douse it."_

_We both scooped handfuls of sand from the circle—didn't matter now that we disturbed it and the already obliterated sigils—and covered our signal fire. By the time the chopper had circled around, the smoke was no longer an issue. We had to go over to the edge of the woods as it settled down, and then I saw Fiddleford at the stick and Grunkle Ford leaning out on the passenger side. Fiddleford killed the engine, and the rotor blades slowed with a whicka-whicha-whicka sound._

_Grunkle Ford stepped out and stooping low, walked toward us. "Mason! Wendy! Are you all right?"_

"_We think so," Wendy said. "Now, anyways. You won't believe what happened—no, scratch that, of course you will. Nobody else, though."_

"_We got turned into animals," I told him. ""Something in that small side valley did it. It might be the source of all the weirdness in the Valley. But don't go in there!"_

_Fiddleford joined us, and Wendy and I told the two of them about what had happened._

"_A real-to-goodness loopy garou?" Fiddleford asked. "'Scuse my French, I mean was you a four-footed wolf or—"_

"_She was a beautiful bipedal werewolf," I told him. "Look." I showed them the two photos we had taken._

"_My word!" Grunkle Ford said. "You developed full canine features, except your hair became a kind of full mane, and—that is a beautiful tail!"_

"_Watch it," Wendy said._

_Grunkle Ford turned red._

_Fiddleford shook his head at my photo. "Dipper got sheepy-fied? Kind of a blow to the ego, ain't it?"_

"_Wasn't his fault," Wendy said._

"_I've thought about that," I told them. "Whatever force rules in that valley, I think it's protective of its own secrecy. Anything human that goes in there, it changes so it can never get out—or maybe, if there are two people, it makes them into natural enemies. Probably the predator would kill and maybe eat the prey—but then the predator would, I don't know, be sealed forever in that form? Does that make sense?"_

"_Lore does say that if a werewolf hasn't killed a human, the person can be rescued," Ford said. "As we did with Gideon. But Wendy resisted the urge to attack—"_

"_It's a long story," Wendy said. "I came close to breaking, but Dip thought of a way to snap me out of it. He made me laugh."_

"_Made you—well, we'll have to go into that."_

_Both Wendy and I were thirsty and hungry. Grunkle Ford had a canteen, so we each drank some, but he hadn't brought food. "You can eat when you get back home. Right now, let's just get you out of here. The helicopter can carry four of us—I think."_

"_Calculations are a mite tricky," Fiddleford warned._

"_My car's not all that far off," Wendy said. "If you take what's left of our camp gear, me and Dipper will hike down to it. We'll meet you back at the Shack—"_

_Ford held up a forefinger. "First, let's meet at the clinic. I want Dr. le Fievre to check you both out—"_

"_Of course you do," Wendy said. "OK, take us about an hour, little more, all told, to get there. You guys go on ahead and tell them we're coming."_

_So Wendy went down the hill, dug up the bobcat—it was stiff—wrapped it in a ground cloth and tied the cloth in place with what we would normally have used for tent ropes. "You gotta have this body tested for rabies," she told Ford._

"_I'll expedite it," Ford said. "We'll take it to the Institute so Dr. Framer can take care of that."_

_We stowed the pack on the helicopter. Ford hunkered near the remains of the centipede monster. "What on earth is this?" he asked._

"_Used to be a person," Wendy said. "That's what the hidden valley did to him. Or maybe her."_

"_You want we should take samples?" Fiddleford asked._

_Ford stood and shook his head. "I don't think we'd learn anything. Stand back a little, please. All in all, I think this is the best solution."_

_He took out a pistol—one of the quantum destabilizers, a third-generation model—and disintegrated the remains._

_I can't say that I felt any remorse._

* * *

They got to the car—Wendy still had the key around her neck—and she slammed down the trunk lid. Dipper asked, "Are you OK to drive? How's your wrist?"'

"Still sore, but not swollen." She showed it to him. "I can drive. But let's go by the Shack before we hit the clinic."

"Why? Grunkle Ford will be there ahead of us—"

"Underwear," she said. "I don't mind so much that we were there in the circle and both naked, because, well I wouldn't have minded anyhow, but mainly because we were too preoccupied with trying to stay alive to get hot and bothered. But you know doctors—I don't want to explain to him or even a nurse how come I'm braless and going commando."

"Good thinking," Dipper said.

They were quiet for a time as Wendy maneuvered the Dodge Dart around and headed back to paved roads and Gravity Falls. Then she said quietly, "Bothers you a lot, doesn't it?"

"Yeah," he said. "I don't know, maybe because I was a freaking lamb at the time. I really didn't mean to kill the bobcat. And I wish that—you know."

"Wish there had been some other way of dealing with the creepy-crawly, yeah, I know," Wendy said. "You're a good guy, Dipper. But realistically, if you hadn't killed the bobcat, it would've killed me, maybe. And if it had done that, it would've gone for you."

Dipper sighed. "I know. But it was just being itself. It still bothers me. Look, please don't tell Mabel, all right? I'll tell her myself after I get used to the idea myself, but for right now—"

Wendy took one hand off the wheel just long enough to zip her lip. "How are the scratches?"

"All nasty and scabby," Dipper said. "I'll bet I have to get a tetanus shot. I had one back when we started high school, but I don't know how long they last."

"Hope the rabies test comes back negative. If it doesn't—well, nowadays you'd have to have like four shots of the vaccine. But I don't think that'll be a problem. Dip, for what it's worth—you were a real badass back there. And thanks for singing that dopey song."

"It's embarrassing," he admitted. "But, you know—I had a good idea that singing it would snap you out of it. So, you've tasted blood."

"I don't want more," Wendy said. "This ain't a midnight movie, dude! I don't sing those lyrics."

"But how did I taste?"

Wendy chuckled. "I don't remember—salty. But it's weird, I know that when I was all wolfy, I had this fantastic sense of hearing and the smells—they were like—I don't have the words. Like a music lover being in the front row of the best symphony ever performed. But now I can't remember the exact feelings! I can remember seeing you as something available and potentially delicious. Sorry, man."

"Good to know I'm a man of good taste," he said. "Funny, but I don't feel as bad about the monster as about the bobcat."

"'Cause you know in that case it meant to kill us—and not for food, but just to destroy us. And because, well—it begged for an ending."

"Do you think it could have been turned back to a human?"

"No, Dip. We were in time, but it was way too late for that thing. And it knew it. I think—if it had been in its human mind when it found us—it would have asked us for the exact same favor."

They had a lot to think about. Mabel was in the Shack when they got there, and she had questions, but Wendy shrugged them off and Dipper made the excuse of going to the bathroom—where he put on boxer briefs and changed his pants—to avoid them. And then after Wendy had changed clothes and brushed her hair, the two of them had to go to the clinic.

They got there around nine-thirty. Dr. le Fievre had been warned to expect them, and he first examined Dipper—"You came close to needing stitches," he said. "But I think we can use butterfly stitches to take care of this big gash. The other one's really just a deep scratch. You may have a bit of a scar."

First he numbed the area with a couple of Novocain shots—the most painful part—and then he had his nurse shave the area. They carefully cleaned both wounds, and the doctor used narrow strips of adhesive skin closures to pull the wider one closed. He treated the other with antibiotic. "How current is your tetanus shot?" he asked.

"I had one nearly five years ago," Dipper said.

"Well—a booster won't hurt," the doctor told him.

That meant another shot, this one in his bicep. "Massage that," the nurse told him. "It'll make it less achy later on. So about once every hour, massage the injection site for about a minute."

He went and waited in the waiting room—a lady brought in her six-year-old who had either a bad head cold or severe allergies—while Wendy went back. She came out in twenty minutes, and the nurse called the mother and daughter in. "How are you?" Dipper asked.

Wendy held up her wrist, which now had an elastic half-glove around it. "Nothing broken, mild sprain. I'll wear this and put ice on the sprain every couple of hours for three days. Not so bad. You?"

He showed her his arm. "Looks like football laces," he said.

"Looks a lot better cleaned up. Tetanus shot?"

"Yep, booster."

The nurse came back and Dipper asked, "Can we go now?"

"No, Dr. le Fievre had word from your great-uncle that they're doing a rabies test on the animal that scratched you." She checked the clock on the wall. "They started the test already, and it takes two hours, so you can either wait here until one, or if you want you can go have lunch and then come back."

"We'll take that option," Wendy said.

They drove out of the Valley for lunch, in a little farmhouse-style restaurant. They ordered comfort food—mashed potatoes, which came with lots of butter, a three-bean dish, and meatloaf, a surprisingly tasty version. Wendy said, "Man, I'm sorry our camping trip was such a flop. Next time we're going someplace totally mundane. I'll have to buy some more kit—"

"I'll get the tent this time," Dipper said. "Yeah, I'd like that. There was that place where you showed me the waterfowl—"

"That would be a good spot. And there are sites all along the Columbia that are gorgeous. So—you're not scared off? You're still willing to go overnight camping with me, even after-?"

He reached for her hand. —_It wasn't your fault, Wen. Sure, like a shot. Let's plan it for one of the weekends when the Shack's getting all crazy as the Fourth of July's coming on._

_Deal. We'll find some real secluded spot where nobody will notice if we get real friendly, you know? And then we can do it._

—_You mean-?_

_Yep. You can not only sing the "Lamby Lamby" song, you can do the dance for me!_

A waitress said, "You folks are tickled about something! Dessert? We have fresh apple pie."

"Why not?" Wendy asked. "_A la mode,_ too!"

"What flavor ice cream?"

Dipper grinned. "Surprise us!"

* * *

The waitress played it safe with vanilla. They got back to the clinic just at one, and Dipper wasn't too surprised—though a little alarmed—to see Ford's Lincoln parked out front. "May be bad news," he said.

They went in and found young Dr. le Fievre talking to Ford—and three new patients in the waiting room.

"Here they are now," Ford said.

"What did they find?" Dipper asked.

"The animal tested clean," the doctor told him. "You're off the hook. Now go home, take care of yourself, and don't get hurt again."

"We'll try," Wendy said. "What do we owe you?"

"Nothing," le Fievre said, smiling. "As long as you invite me to the wedding."

* * *

And that was almost the end of it, but then Dipper had to show Mabel the photos, and she had to ask a ton of questions. Among them, she was intensely interested in how it felt to have a tail. "Tripper's is so expressive! Was yours expressive? Did you like wrap it around my sheepish brother?"

"We were being attacked by wild animals," Wendy pointed out. "Wasn't hardly time."

Tripper showed more interest in Wendy—maybe her clothes carried some lingering wolfish scent—but he wasn't hostile, just inquisitive and sniffy.

He treated Dipper the same as he always did—happy, friendly, wanting to chase balls and romp.

Anyway, the danger had passed, though Dipper understood that Ford was working on some way of fencing off the tunnel so no one would venture into the treacherous valley. That would come later, time enough to worry about it in July and August.

That evening Teek and Mabel went bowling, but Wendy begged off because of her wrist, and she and Dipper just settled for a long walk out to the meadow near Moon Trap Pond, where they sat on a ground cloth, held hands, and looked up at the stars.

They passed guilts back and forth—Wendy felt sorry for her bad judgment in suggesting the trip to the hidden valley, Dipper for his admittedly necessary but regrettable killing of the two enemies.

At one point, he asked, "Badass? Me? Did you really mean that?"

Wendy considered. "Well, maybe I misspoke. Actually I got a pretty good look at you as we were changing back to human, and I gotta say—badass? Nah, it looked pretty good to me."

That got them into a giggly shoving match, and that got Wendy into a tickle attack (she had learned Dipper's vulnerability from Mabel), and that got them into—

Well, never mind. They came back under the stars, feeling better and leaving most of their regrets behind them. And as they neared the Shack, the still fat but waning moon rose, and they looked up at it with a feeling of relief and gratitude for its pale, clean light.

* * *

The End


End file.
